Chapter II (1)

Gussie Thompson was an angel-faced child with pretty ringlety hair, and he had come to college from a strict boarding-school with the intention of making a bad man of himself. And when a boy wants badly to go to the devil there is no reason why he should find it very difficult. In this thought I find I have been anticipated by Virgil.

But though the descent is easy it does not follow that it is always graceful. Thompson, who was conscientiously trying to do it properly, had his discouragements and sour balls just as often as the poler who sat in the next seat and wore trousers that were too short.

People persistently considered Gussie disgustingly good, when in reality he was very bad and smoked big black cigars with red and gilt bands about them. And indeed it is discouraging to walk down to the football practice with the gang, breathing cigarette-smoke at every fifth step, and then have some class-mate you have nothing to do with ask you, before all the fellows, to lead class prayer-meeting the next Sunday. But all that was over long ago.

He now wore the dark bad expression without any conscious effort. No one asked him where the Greek lesson was any more. He seldom had to blow his breath in fellows' faces. And at the club he was no longer obliged to blink and say, "How do I look this morning?" they asked of their own accord, "Full last night, Gus?" just as some people say "Good-morning."

One evening, at about the beginning of the season known to some as "bock beer time," he was in his room surrounded with a few of his own sort, and a knock came at the door. But it was not a very loud one, so he did not take the trouble to answer until there came a second knock, an emphatic one. Then he emptied a lungful of cigarette-smoke and shouted, "Come in and shut your damn racket." He looked up.

Lawrence was framed in the door-way, Lawrence the senior, with his 'varsity sweater and his impressive air.

On the campus Lawrence generally nodded to Thompson, when he remembered him. Once, not long ago, he had walked up the rear stairs of Dickinson with him and said, "What do you fellows have at this hour?" and Gussie wondered when the clubs held their first elections.

With his words of apology and welcome Thompson felt a wave of satisfaction at having a gang about the table with cards and beer-mugs on it. He was glad he had strung the champagne-corks over the mantel-piece.

All of the gang had arisen, and yet this was a Princeton room. If the senior observed the unusual mark he showed little gratitude, for without seeming to be aware of their presence he said, in his gruff voice, "When will you be at leisure, Thompson?" and looked at his watch.

He was the sort of senior that could do these things, and it had the desired effect. They all remembered that they had engagements and picked up their caps and said, "So long, old man," and got out. This was not done constrainedly but as a perfectly natural thing. And Gussie beamed.

The door slammed and the freshman said, "Have a drink, Lawrence."

The senior said, "No, I thank you," and then contradicted himself, "Yes, I will take a little of that." He did not approve of little boys having whiskey in their rooms and big cut-glass decanters on their bookcases, but he remembered something. "That's good whiskey, Thompson." Lawrence sipped and whiffed and held his glass to the light, "excellent whiskey." He gravely smacked his lips. "It reminds me of some Bourbon they once gave us down in Kentucky, on the Glee Club trip--in Louisville, I think it was. They called it Pendennis Club."

Thompson pushed a cigarette-case across the table. "That's Pendennis Club," he replied, simply. "A friend of mine down there sends it to me. I find you can't get good liquor in our part of the country. It's all rot-gut." He twisted his pretty brows into a scowl and emptied his small lungs of smoke aimed at the ceiling.

"I see," said Lawrence, looking interested.

"You know what they say about Kentucky," the freshman proceeded, "for good whiskey, fast horses, and pretty women."

"Yes," said Lawrence.

The freshman refilled his guest's glass with Pendennis Club and his own lungs with cigarette-smoke, which he allowed to seek the free air of the room slowly, with his head tipped back and a mouth twisted scornfully as he had once seen another devil of a fellow do it, who said, "I don't give a damn for the girl." All of which was lost on Lawrence, who was rubbing his chin and looking in the other direction and wishing he had not come.

"By the way, Thompson, speaking of horses, how did you come out playing the races last fall? I often saw you on the train going up--" this was a lie--"when I was slaving over football. Luck stay by you?"

Then the freshman leaned back and said things about Futurity Stakes and plunging at Morris Park and a lucky sixteen-to-one shot, intermingled with a brave lot of profanity and considerable cigarette smoke. Lawrence wore the look of a man listening, and thought up what to say next.

"By the way, Thompson," only it was not by the way to anything but his own thoughts, "where's your friend Darnell? I didn't see him with the others in here."

"No," said the devil of a fellow, "he won't own up to it, but he's a good bit of a poler at heart, Lawrence."

"I did not think it of him," said Lawrence, sincerely. "He's a blame nice fellow though, isn't he?"

"Right. He's the best friend I have. He's pretty young and has a lot of things to learn, but he's a mighty nice man. Awfully clever chap, too. Wish I had his brains. I believe he comes from very nice people in New York, doesn't he?"

"Yes. Thompson, you are dead right in saying he's too young."

A beam of pleasure shot across his young host's face, which was seen by Lawrence, who now felt all right, and began to talk.

"He's entirely too young, Thompson, and the deuce of it is that he doesn't realize how very young he is. A fellow like that never does. You know what I mean. And as far as I can see--I think you had the same thing in mind a moment ago--he is about to make a fool of himself unless he is very careful. He's entirely too nice a fellow, Thompson, for anything like that to happen." Lawrence leaned back and put his feet on the table.

"You see," he continued, "Darnell tries to do things that you fellows do, who are more mature, and he doesn't seem to realize that he is only a boy. Now with you and me it is different. We are older and know things and have been around a bit and-- You know what I mean. We can do a lot of things and have a good time and be none the worse for it, but as for Darnell, why, he's a kid, Thompson, a mere kid."

Thompson breathed cigarettes and looked judicial.

Lawrence moved his chair around so that he could lean an elbow on the table. He looked at the fire through the glass of liquid in his hand. "Thompson, I'm in a hole. A bad hole, too. I'm going to tell you about it and maybe ask your advice. I don't mind telling you because I know you can keep your mouth shut. I came here this evening for that very purpose.

"You know I know Darnell's people and all that. Well, I know his sister quite well." That happened to be a lie. "And last commencement when she was down here she asked me to look after her brother when he entered in the fall." That happened to be true, though Lawrence had forgotten it. "She's a pretty good friend of mine, and whenever I see her"--he could not have distinguished her from the other little girls in the school up-town--"she always asks me about her brother. And, well, Thompson, a fellow hates to lie to a respectable woman, you know."

"Only a cad will lie to a decent girl," said the other, sympathetically.

"Certainly. Now, Thompson, I'll tell you what I think I'll do. I am going to very frankly ask you to help me out of this hole." Lawrence looked closely at the freshman. Then he went on, talking rapidly now with his eyebrows tucked down and the words coming between his teeth. Thompson had seen him do it before and had practised it in his room alone.

"You can do it or not, just as you please, but you are the only one whom I'd care to ask to do it. You are the only one I'd trust with it. In fact, you are the only one that _could_ do it. Thompson, you know yourself that you have more influence over Darnell than any man in the class."

"Oh, I don't know," the freshman feebly protested.

"Well I do. He has as much as told me so. I am going to ask you very frankly to-- I don't know what your views are," the senior interrupted himself, "but I believe in having all the fun in the world I can for myself as long as I mind my own business. But I'd just as soon, when I have the chance--" Lawrence looked down at the whiskey which he was gently swishing around in his glass. He made his voice sound as if embarrassed. "Well, dammit, I'm no saint, but you know it says somewhere that saving one soul will wipe out a multitude of sins or something of that sort."

"God knows we have enough of them," said the devil of a fellow, who now hurled the butt of his cigarette at the fire and arose from his seat. He threw back his head and spoke.

"Lawrence, you needn't say any more. I can give you my answer now." He plunged his hands in his pockets and began striding up and down the room and scowled as he strode.

"Lawrence, I am a peculiar man, and I think my own thoughts and lead my own life according to my own ideas. I keep this room here open to everyone who desires to enter. My whiskey and tobacco is anybody's who wants it. And as long as my guests mind their own business my room is theirs. But when certain members of my class, certain milksops and sanctimonious Gospel sharks come up here and tell me that I am doing wrong and tell me what it is my duty to do, I very frankly tell them to go to hell." He looked around the walls at the Saronys and a French print or two as if to call them to witness, then went on:

"Lawrence, I perceived your drift from the start, and at first, I must confess, I was somewhat taken aback, Lawrence, by your approaching me on such a subject."

The one listening with a bland look of attention on his face and his feet on the table considered this rather fresh, but said nothing.

"But only for a moment," the freshman continued, "only for a moment, I assure you. You talked to me like a man to a man, a real man, not a Gospel shark or a poler, but a man who knows things and yet gives a fellow credit for some good impulses. I appreciate your situation exactly. I have been placed in similar ones myself. I know how it is. And I'm glad you came up here to-night. You rushed in where angels would not have dared, and I'm damn glad you did." He stopped walking the floor. "Now I'm not accustomed to this sort of thing, Lawrence, as you must know, and I won't promise much. But I give you my word, I'll do my best for Darnell."

Lawrence took the hand Thompson dramatically held out to him. He restrained another impulse, an ungrateful one, and said, "Thompson, I always thought I understood you better than your own class-mates did." And Gussie blushed.

The senior arose. "Gus,"--he called him Gus--"I appreciate to a nicety the delicacy of your position in this matter. Please don't let it inconvenience you in any way. I shall always be grateful to you for what you have undertaken this evening, and if I can ever be of service to you, please command me." Some of this was sincere. "I have an engagement now. Good-night. No, I thank you, no more to-night. Come up and see me some time, Gus. Good-night."

"Good-night, Harry," said the other. "Wish you would drop up often."

"I know that," thought Lawrence, as he closed the door, "only I wouldn't say 'Harry' very often if I were you."

Left alone, Thompson took a gulp of whiskey straight without wincing very much, stretched out in a big chair and planned how to follow his friend Lawrence's suggestions, wrinkling his brows and looking no doubt very much like the man of the world that he read about as he did so.

Meanwhile Lawrence was saying to himself, "Still, it's all in a good cause," and hurrying along the street with his coat-collar turned up, like a man ashamed of himself.

"This time next year," he was thinking, "I'll be out of college and hustling in the big world which recent graduates are always telling me I know nothing about. I suppose I shall have to get used to boot-licking and getting pulls. That's business. But just at present I don't like the taste." So he hurried up the street for a counter-irritant, while the mood was on him.

A few moments later he was saying, "The fact of the matter is, Darnell, I'm in a pretty bad hole, and I think I'll ask your advice."

"_My_ advice?" said Darnell.

"Yes, if you do not object to giving it."

"I think you know what I mean," said the freshman, "don't you?"

"Yes," said Lawrence, "I know what you mean." He also knew he was finding it a different matter talking to this freshman.

"Well, I'll tell you about it anyway," he went on. "Last year, when your friend Gus Thompson's sister was down here for the sophomore reception--what?" The freshman's big eyes were making him nearly blush.

"Why, Gus is an only child, you know. You must mean his cousin."

"Did I say sister? I meant cousin. His cousin, of course--she's a smooth girl, his cousin. Well, his cousin got at me and asked me to look after him when he entered college and see that he poled and all that. Sort of queer thing, wasn't it? But I promised to do it, and you know you hate to lie to a--well, I hate to deceive her about it."

Then Lawrence went on to point out that while he, Darnell, had plenty of fun in life, he kept up in first division at the same time, which was the way to do, whereas that boy Thompson, who seemed rather immature, had two conditions and was in a good way to being dropped; and he, Darnell, had considerable influence over Thompson--oh, yes, he had: Gus had only that evening referred to Darnell as his best friend, and so on. But Lawrence forgot to say damn this time.

When he finished, the freshman turned toward the senior two fine-looking eyes filled with surprise and some other things which caused Lawrence to feel like a hypocrite, which he was.

"Why," replied Darnell, "of course, Lawrence. To be sure I don't know how well I can succeed, but I'll be very glad to try it. And, Lawrence, I think I ought to tell you that I appreciate your trusting me in a thing of this nature, only----"

"Oh, that's all right," said Lawrence, arising.

"Only, Lawrence," continued the freshman, who seemed to have something to say, "why didn't you tell me this was what you wanted long ago? I would have been willing, I think, without your cultivating my acquaintance so long."

"See here," said Lawrence, with his hand on the door-knob, "to be right honest, I never dreamed of asking you to do anything of the sort until this very day. If I cultivated you it was for yourself and because I like you. I never told anyone _that_ before. Good-night."

On his way across the campus Lawrence stopped and told an innocent old elm-tree this: "The man that first said '_Similia similibus curantur_' was very much of a fool. I feel more like a fellow cribbing in exams than I did before." Then he kicked the elm and shouted "Hello-o, Billy Nolan, are you up there?" and ran up the stairs to smoke a good-night pipe and talk about senior vacation. He felt better in the morning.

It was one evening about a week after this that young Thompson came running up to Lawrence's room with a scowl on his face, and talked like an important man in a hurry.

"Why, he's dead easy! I'll say, 'Aw, let's get out of here, this beer is rotten.' 'All right,' he'll say, 'let's wander over to the room.' Minute we get there he proposes that we pole the Greek or something. See his idea? He thinks he'll sour me on being quiet, but, ha, ha! I fool him every time--how? Why I just sit down and pole to beat the band until too late for him to join the gang. See? Oh, but he's easy! I have made up my mind to keep that boy from making a fool of himself, and when I make up my mind to a thing, I don't believe in crawling. Besides, poling won't hurt me any."

"Oh, no, Thompson," said Lawrence sympathetically. "I don't see how it can hurt you."

Darnell came in a little later and sat down in the very same chair and had this to say: "Lawrence, Gus Thompson is a queer fellow. You know he doesn't go with the crowd any more, and because _he_ is sour and doesn't care to have any good times, he tries to interfere with my enjoyment too. He's always proposing that we stay in the rooms--you know we room together now. I thought I could look after him better in that way-- Well, when he kicks on poling I start to join the gang, and then he says 'All right, let's pole.' He must be jealous about me. But that's the way I work him. He's so easy."

"Yes," said Lawrence, "lots of people are."

THE SCRUB QUARTER-BACK

Tommy Wormsey was a meek little boy with an ugly face, mostly covered with court-plaster, and he would rather fall on a football than eat.

When he came trotting out upon the field, the college along the side lines always smiled at the way he tipped his head to one side with his eyes on the ground, as though he was ashamed of himself and of his funny little bumpy body, stuck into a torn suit and stockings which weren't mates and had holes in them. When he skimmed over the ground and dived through the air and brought down a two-hundred-and-something-pound guard, with his knotty little arms barely reaching about the big thighs, it looked very absurd, and when he jumped up again, yelling "3--9--64" in his shrill earnest voice, and ran sniffling back to his place, with his sorrowful face seeming to say, "I know I oughtn't to have let him slide so far, but please don't scold me this time," the crowd laughed uproariously, which hurt his feelings.

But he paid very little attention to anything except the scrub captain's orders and the admonitions of the coachers, to whom he said, "Yes, sir," and "I'll try it that way, sir." He was afraid of them, and looked down at his torn stockings when they spoke to him. Those of the crowd along the ropes who knew everything, as well as the other spectators who only knew a few things, said that Freshman Wormsey had more sand and football instinct than any man on the field. But they did not know what a coward he was at heart.

More than once when a 'varsity guard had broken through and jumped on him, and the scrub halves had fallen on him from the other direction to keep him from being shoved back, and the other 'varsity guard and the centre, who were not light, had thrown themselves upon these, and one of the ends had swung round and jumped on the top of the pile on general principles, Wormsey, at the bottom, said "ouch!" under his breath, if he had any. He weighed 137 pounds stripped.

At night, after the trick practice with checkers at the Athletic Club, he always hurried back to his room, and stacked the pillows and sofa cushions up in the corner of the room, with the black one in the centre, and taking his place on one knee in the opposite corner, socked the ball into the pile. Every time he missed the black one in the centre he called himself names.

Sometimes when he did this he became excited, and sprang forward and knocked down chairs and tables and things. But he paid no attention to that. He only bit his nails and fell to passing again, and kept it up sometimes until eleven o'clock, which was a whole hour later than he had any business to be out of bed.

But there were days when it became tiresome, this constant pound, pound, pound, fall down, get up and pound again, and once in a while there came dark times when he felt that it all didn't pay, which was very unpatriotic thinking; and the next day, when the crowd yelled, "Well tackled, Wormsey!" he wondered how he could have been such a mucker as to think it. But it was rather hard work for a seventeen-year-old boy whose bones weren't knit to play two thirty-minute halves every day as hard as they were doing now, and then practise place kicks and catching punts afterward, besides keeping hold of all the signals and systems and stuff that were drummed into his little head every evening, along with the rest of the second eleven, in the room across the hall from the one where the 'varsity were learning their systems and signals and tricks.

It's all well enough for them. They have their 'varsity sweaters with the big P on them, and have their pictures printed in the papers, and are pointed out and praised and petted and fondled and fussed over like blue-ribboned hunters at the horse show; but for the poor, faithful, unappreciated scrub it's a different story. There's none of the glory, and all work and grind and strain at the top notch of capacity. And nothing at the end of it but thanks and the consciousness of doing one's duty by the college. So about this time, when they were approaching that critical stage in training which is like getting one's second wind in a cross-country run, he used to have some terrible times with himself. If anyone knew what muckerishly cowardly thoughts he had, he was afraid they'd fire him from college.

He was ashamed of himself, but he couldn't help it. He was getting sick of training, sick of getting up at seven o'clock in the morning and hurrying down to breakfast while the alarm clocks were going off in East and West colleges, and the frost was still on the grass. Every day, as soon as the morning recitations were over, no matter what kind of weather, he must jump into the 'bus at the corner of Dickinson Hall, drive down to the grounds, undress and dress again, and hobble out upon the field, and get his poor little body bumped and pounded and kicked and trampled on, and the rest of his personality yelled at by the captain, and scolded by the coachers, who stand alongside in nicely creased trousers, with canes in their hands, and call out, "Line up more quickly, scrub," which is hard to do when one's lungs are breathless, especially when one is a quarter-back, and needs a certain amount of wind to scream out the signals in a loud enough tone to keep from being sworn at. And that's the way they make football stuff.

To-day he let Hartshorn drag him five yards and missed one tackle outright, and he was discouraged. After the line-up, while they were practising him at catching punts, he seemed to have such bad luck holding the ball; and once, in trying for a wild one when he had run over by the cinder track, grunting and straining, and had put up his little arms, only to feel the ball bounce off his chest, he gnashed his teeth so loud and said "Oh, dear!" in such a plaintive whimper, like a child waking from a bad dream, that two pipe-smoking seniors, who were trooping out in the rear of the crowd, smiled audibly and said something about him. He could not hear what it was. He only heard them laugh, and it nearly broke his heart. But all that he could do was to call them things under his breath, and run sniffling back to his place again.

The trouble with the boy was he had worked so hard and worried so much that he was over-trained, and so, naturally, there was not much ginger left in him. And the reason the keen-eyed trainer did not see this and lay him off for a few days was that Wormsey thought it his duty to make up in nerve what he lacked in ginger; and he was too bashful to tell anyone how difficult it was to make himself play hard, and how that he no longer felt springy when he jumped out of bed in the morning, and that he slept all the afternoon after practice, instead of studying, as all football men should.

He went into the field-house the next day, unbuttoning his coat and hating football. He hated the ill-smelling dressing-room. He was sick of training, sick of rare beef and Bass's ale and bandages and rub-downs, and the captain's admonitions and the coacher's scoldings. He thought he would give anything not to be obliged to play that day. He was sore all over, and his ear would be torn open again, and he didn't like having the blood trickle down his neck; it felt so sticky.

It was a hot, lazy, Indian-summer day; and his muscles felt exhausted. He felt as much like exerting them as one feels like studying in spring term directly after dinner, when the seniors are singing on the steps. As he came hobbling out of the field-house he laced his little jacket, and made up his mind that after the practice he would tell the captain that he could not spare the time from his studies to play football, patriotism or no patriotism. This was not necessary, because he was tumbled over in the opening play, and remained upon the ground even after the captain cried "Line up quickly," with his ugly little face doubled up in a knot.

"There goes another back," said the scrub captain, pettishly, snapping his fingers. "Rice, you play quarter; and Richardson, you come play half in Rice's place."

Another sub and William, the negro rubber, picked Wormsey up, the doctor following behind, and turning back to see the play, which had already begun again, for he wanted to see how the new system was working.

As they approached the field-house he saw the two fellows who had laughed at him the day before standing apart down at the end of the field. One of them was tapping his pipe against the heel of his shoe, and saying, "I didn't know that that little devil could be hurt. He always--" But just then the 'varsity full-back made a long "twister" punt, and he interrupted himself with an exclamation about that. It sounded like a reproach to Wormsey, and he began to feel that he had somehow gotten hurt with malice aforethought. And this made him so ashamed that when they reached the field-house the trainer, sponging his face, said, encouragingly: "That's all right, me boy. Don't feel badly. You'll be out again in a couple of weeks. I've been meaning to lay you off for a while, anyway. I'll tell you for why; you're a little stale, Tommy, a little stale."

Every day now Wormsey trudged down to the field on crutches--they had to be sawed off at the bottom first--and watched the practice from a pile of blankets on the side-lines. It was a fine thing, he told himself, to watch the others do all the work while he sat still with four 'varsity sweaters tied about his neck. This was a great snap; he was still on the scrub, was at the training table, and would have his picture taken, would go to the Thanksgiving game free, and yet did not have to get pounded and pummelled.

He was made a good deal of now. The coachers patted him on the back and said "My boy" to him. He had a lot of sympathetic adulation from admiring classmates. Upper-classmen whom he had never seen before, but who somehow knew him, came up and said, "How's the leg, Tommy?" At which he hung his head and sniffled, and said, "Getting along pretty well, thank you," and then grinned, because he didn't know whether they were guying him or not.

In a few days he could walk with a cane, and he put on his football clothes because they were more comfortable. He limped after the teams up and down the field, and squatted down to see how the 'varsity made their openings, and he learned how to tell, by the expression of his legs, on which side the quarter was going to pass the ball, which nobody else in the world could tell. Also, by carelessly daily sauntering into the cage during the preliminary practising, with a guileless smile on his face, he found out the 'varsity signals, which he had no business to find out.

Sometimes he became very much excited during the scrimmages, and once, when Dandridge, the wriggly 'varsity half-back, kept on squirming and gaining after he had been twice downed, Wormsey screamed, as he hopped up and down on one foot, "Oh, grab--grab him! _Please_ grab him! Oh! oh!" so loud that all the field heard it and laughed at him. Then he realized what a fool he had made of himself and kicked himself with his good leg, and limped slowly up the field to study the next play.

But conceited as it was, he really thought that he would have stopped that runner if he had been there. He imagined just how it would feel to have once more the thrill of a clean tackle, sailing through the air, and locking his arms tight, and squeezing hard, and both rolling over and over, while the crowd yelled in the distance. And he thought it would be fine to get out there again, and run his hands through his hair, and call out the signals, and plunge the ball home into the back's stomach, and then pitch forward, and push and strain and sweat and fall down and get up again. He had a firm healthy skin now, and had gone up to the tremendous weight of 138½, which was vulgar obesity.

One windy sunny day when Wormsey was limping friskily up and down the field with his hair blowing about, Stump, the 'varsity quarter, instead of springing up to his place after one of the tandem plays, as he should have done, lay still on the ground, while the college held its breath.

"It's Stump! it's Stump!" they whispered to one another with scared faces. Then they no longer held their breaths. They moaned, and stamped their heels into the frosty ground, and gazed out sadly toward the dear, frowzy head of the man who was being carried to the field-house.

"It's only a wrench," said the doctor. "He'll be out in a few days."

The captain's mouth grew a little more stern, but he only snapped his fingers, and said: "Bristol! No, he's laid off too. Wait a moment, doctor," he called out. "Is Wormsey well enough to play?"

"Wormsey?" said Tommy to himself in little gasps. "Why, I'm Wormsey. What! play with the 'varsity!"

And the doctor's voice came back through the wind, "No, I think not."

"Oh, yes, I am!" yelled the shrill voice, which was heard all up and down both sides of the field, and reached to the Athletic Club; and throwing away his cane, and bending over to let some one pull off two sweaters, Wormsey ran sniffling out on the field.

"See, Jack," he called to the trainer. "I don't limp a bit." But he kept his face turned to one side so that the trainer couldn't see it twitch.

"Come here and I'll give you the signals, Wormsey," said the captain.

"I know them already," said Wormsey, looking ashamed of himself; and he took his place on one knee behind the centre who had so often tumbled upon him.

Then he jumped in and showed everybody what he had been learning during the past ten days. He was in perfect condition now, except for the ankle, which he forgot about. He was quite accurate in his quick method of passing, and he tackled ravenously. Fellows like Wormsey never get soft. "Just watch that boy follow the ball," exclaimed one of the coachers to another. "Too bad he's so light," said the other.

Once when the scrub had the ball they gave the signal for a trick which they had been saving up as a surprise for the 'varsity. Tommy knew that signal. He dashed through the line between tackle and end, he caught the long pass on the fly, and having plenty of wind and a clear field, he made a touch-down unassisted, which made the crowd yell and applaud. Of course it was a great fluke, and Wormsey knew that, but all the same, while the crowd gave a cheer for Tommy Wormsey, and a three-times-three for "the little devil," he grinned for a moment, and puckered up his eyes. But it is not the crowd that chooses the team.

That evening at dinner all the college was talking about the great tear the little freshman had made, and down at the Athletic Club Wormsey overheard one of the coachers say: "When Stump comes out again, it'll make him work to see the freshman putting up a game like that. But of course he can't keep it up. The pace is too fast."

Wormsey bit his nails and had his own opinion about that. But whatever it might have been was never learned, because the next day he was taken off the field for the season. His bad ankle was sprained in the first half, which served him right for disobeying the doctor's order. But he should not have cared. Didn't he play one whole day on the 'varsity?

WHEN GIRLS COME TO PRINCETON

If you would like to see a college campus as it really is, with students walking along with the gait and the manner and the clothes they usually wear, and to hear the old bell ring, the hall and dormitory stairs rattle, the entries echo and the feet scrape along the stone walks as on ordinary occasions, and see the quadrangle become crowded and noisy, then suddenly empty and quiet again, and if you wish to have a view of your brother's room in its average state of order and ornamentation, do not come to Princeton for one of the class dances, or on the day of a big game, when everyone is excited and well dressed, and even the old elms are in an abnormal flutter, but come down in a small party some quiet day in an ordinary week, when there are no extra cars on the small informal train which jolts up from the junction. Tell your brother that you are coming, or his roommate, who will gladly cut a lecture or two and show you about the campus. Then you may see the college world in its normal state, and the undergraduate in his characteristic settings--any number of him with a pipe in his mouth or a song, slouching across the campus with the Princeton gait, wearing something disreputable upon his head, corduroys and sweaters or flannels and cheviots upon his body, and an air of ownership combined with irresponsibility all over. In short, if you prefer to get some idea of college life, and learn, as far as a girl can, why college days are the best of a lifetime, visit Princeton on some day that is not a special occasion. But very likely this is not what you prefer.

Most girls would rather hurry down with a big trunk in a crowded special train, and go to four teas, meet a score of men apiece whom they will never see again, dance all night, and then, in a few minutes, arise looking as fresh as they did on Easter Sunday, and smile good-byes at the depot to the breakfastless young men whom they leave forsaken and sleepy to try to go on where they left off, while they themselves hurry back to town, and to another dance the next night.

A college dance is generally considered very good fun. There is an adventurous zest in journeying to a college, and exploring it, and meeting crowds of people you never saw before, and there is something wild and reckless in being quartered in an odd little boarding-house, or, more delicious still, in some room in University Hall borrowed by your entertainer for the occasion, with the owner's photographs and souvenirs hanging about just as he left them. Then, too, the young men themselves, some of whom you have met or heard of before, try to be very agreeable, and do everything in their power to make you have a good time, if for no other reason, in order that you may see how superior their college is to any other, so that even several-seasoned society girls consider it worth their while to run down to a college dance, and be amused by these fresh-faced young fellows. Some of them have been coming off and on for several generations of college men, and could talk interestingly of your brother in the class of '88 should they be so inclined. They know all about these hops. This is written for you who have yet to attend one.

There are three regular dances each year, and they are given by the three upper classes. One takes place at the close of the mid-year examinations, to usher in the new term. Another is given at a more beautiful time of the year, usually occurring on the eve of some great baseball game. The third one, the most splendid and most jammed, is the sophomores' reception, given on the night before Commencement to the class which graduates the following day.

Each class has a dance committee, who fly around and work hard to make their dance finer than the last one, and generally succeed. They procure a fine patroness list to engrave on their invitations, containing several of the sort of names that appear in connection with Patriarchs' balls and Philadelphia assemblies, together with those of two or three professors' wives, to lend a tone. The committee get hold of the Gymnasium, pull down the bars and draw the trapeze to one side; then have a lot of pink and white cheese-cloth tacked up, hang some athletic trophies over the rafters, string a few hundred incandescent lights here and there, and send to one of the neighboring cities for a smart caterer and a large high-priced orchestra to come for the night. Then they are ready for you.

Before the dance, however, you are taken to a few teas which are given by some of the clubs. You saw the club-houses when you were shown about earlier in the day. Some of them are very handsome, and they are all nice, and the nicest is the one to which your brother belongs, or whoever owns the club-pin you carry home with you. At the teas the rooms are crowded, the air is hot, the flowers are tumbled over, you become hoarse, and in most features it is similar to any tea, except that there are enough men. You will here meet several of those whose names you have on your dance-card, and you may make up your mind whether to remember that fact or not.

After the round of teas there remain but two hours in which to dress. When you have hurried on those things which make up "a dream," "a creation," or "a symphony," whichever it is that you bring, and have had, if you feel like it, a bit of dinner, you are taken, at a little after eight o'clock, to church. The Glee, Banjo, and Mandolin clubs give a very good concert here, and it is a good place to have your escort point out the various men who are fortunate enough to be on your card, and gives you a good opportunity to notice the taste displayed by other girls in their costumes, and feel pleased with your own. There are all sorts of gowns, made of many sorts of materials with interesting names.

When the concert is at last over--much as you enjoyed it, it seemed rather long to you, who were thinking of what was to follow--you are taken to University Hall, which is across the street, or to the Gymnasium, if the dance is to be there, which is a little farther back on the campus, and you are shown to the dressing-room, where those last fluttering finishing touches are put on. Those calm, assured-looking young women who came in ahead of you are a little excited too, as is that laughing girl who was pointed out to you as a flirt.

When you are quite ready, and are pulling and smoothing your gloves while waiting for the chaperon to start your party, you catch a glimpse of something, as the door opens for an instant, which extends from the door all along the dimly lighted passage to the very stairs beyond--something which looks like a great black bank with gleaming white patches here and there. This is made up of young men, whose collars are stiff and straight. When your chaperon stalks forth with a sort of flourish, several members of the black and white bank come forward to meet your party, and the rest make inaudible comments upon your appearance, probably to the effect that you are "smooth." But all that you are sure of is that your escort offers you his arm with a smile and a stiff bow, that you walk nervously up the winding stairs, step into a dazzle of light, where members of the dance committee are running hither and thither with dance-cards and girls, and where patronesses are smiling, bowing, looking stately, holding their fans, and doing whatever patronesses usually do. Then the orchestra plays a promenade, to which a few impatient couples try to waltz, and you begin what you have talked about and thought about and dreamed about for a month.

You notice when you have danced the first one with your brother's roommate, at whose special invitation you came, that as soon as he has taken you to your seat he rushes off like mad. In a moment he comes back again, bearing with him the young man who was pointed out to you at the concert as being down on your card for No. 2. While he is being presented, still another anxious-eyed man runs up and hurriedly snatches off your host. These are men who are "running" girls' cards.

Now, while you and your new acquaintance are waiting for the music to begin, and are amiably agreeing that the concert was good, that the room is warm, that the light effects are pretty, you may steal another glance at your dance-card to make sure of this man's name. It is carefully written in ink on the pretty silk-and-leather-bound card which was handed to you on the way to the concert. All the numbers are filled and three extras. This is the way it was done:

About three weeks ago a young man was sitting in the grand stand one sunny afternoon watching the baseball practice, and wondering whether the nine would beat Harvard, when one of his clubmates came along and asked him for a match. He complied with the request, and said, "Don't mention it." Then the borrower of the match asked if he were going to the dance, and as he admitted his intention of doing so, he was handed a preliminary card which had your name at the top of it. Then, after a little more conversation, he put his name down for No. 2, and handed it back to your host, who thanked him. And again he said, "Don't mention it." That was the man who is about to dance with you. At that time you were unknown to him. The other names were secured in various ways. In the midst of a lecture your card was passed along to some fellow on the end of the row, who, with the same pencil with which he was taking notes on "Post-Kantian Philosophy," secured for himself a _deux-temps_ with you. Other men were hailed out in front of Old North when the seniors were singing, or at the club dinner tables, and in the lounging-rooms when they were talking baseball, or when they were at the billiard table and had to walk across the room to where their coats were hanging to see their cards. Perhaps your host took a night off to it, and went out on the campus and yelled "Hello, Billy Wilson!" under Billy Wilson's window to see if he were in before he ran up the stairs to his room and demanded to see his dance-card; and went on thus from entry to entry as if he were out after subscriptions, except that he went to his friends. Sometimes it is not an easy task to fill five or six cards, especially when every one is feeling rather down-hearted over an unfortunate athletic season. Of course if the girl has been down before, and is well known and popular, there is no difficulty of this kind. Probably the next time you come down you won't need a card.

Except for the five dances which he saves out for himself you see very little of your host during the evening, and even then he seems worried and absent-minded. It no doubt piques you a little that the moment the music ceases he leaves you, and, with an expression on his face which reminds you of when "Pigs in Clover" was the rage, darts across the room, bumping into people and begging pardons. The only time he looks comfortable and recalls to your mind last Christmas holidays is when he and you have slipped off to one of those quiet little nooks so bounteously adorned with rugs and hangings, brought for the occasion from some dormitory room, to enjoy two little bits of ice which he has pillaged from the supper-room. Then for a while he seems to forget his cares, and you two have a good old-fashioned chat. You notice a streak of chicken-salad along his silken collar, but that gives you no adequate idea of the muscle and bad language required to secure and bear away those two little dabs of ice and one napkin, any more than his anxious expression indicates the amount of patience and ubiquity required to "run" three girls' cards at a college dance.

All this time you have been going through the several different stages of "a perfectly lovely time." You have shown a lot of young men how well you can dance, and have gotten along very well with all you have met except that once when you asked sweetly, sympathetically, "Won't you be just too glad to be a sophomore next year?" of a very studious and diminutive member of the graduating class. The chat is no longer about the concert, nor is the heat mentioned, though it is terrific, nor the effect of the lights upon the pink and white cheese-cloth, except by those gallants who see fit to say something about its being becoming to certain complexions. And, most gratifying of all, you notice that those who have your name on their cards more than once come the second time without being brought. Indeed, some come again who have not that good fortune, and you pay slight attention to your card after supper, but dance with those who come up and beg for a dance, because you are tender-hearted and hate to displease them. It is a good plan to lose your card now or hide it. Some girls tear up theirs the moment they come, for fear they might make a mistake, and consequently hurt somebody's feelings.

By this time you have gotten your second wind, if you'll pardon the expression. You talk without previously meditating upon what you are about to say; but you know it's all right just as you drift to the strains of the music automatically. Your eyes are wide open and sparkling; your cheeks have a flush which is becoming; you are dimly conscious that your visit at Princeton is a success. And just as you are beginning to wish that all this could last forever you hear a strain of music of which every daughter of a loving home should be fond, and then, for the first time, you notice that the stately patronesses in their bower are opening their eyes very wide and gritting their teeth very hard. Then, having danced that last one furiously, you are dragged off, casting a lingering glance at faded flowers, wilted collars, tired musicians, torn skirts.

When you come from the noisy, laughing dressing-room a moment later, wrapped from head to foot in a great long thing which covers any changes the five hours' exercise might have wrought in your appearance, you are met by your bedraggled escort under the light, where you took his arm before, long ago, on the way to the dance. You can remember how stiff his collar was then and how smooth his hair. Everything, animate and inanimate, looks different now, especially with that ghastly streak of dawn which mingles with the electric light. It makes some of the girls look rather faded and jaded, you think, and some of the men rather rakish, but not even the girls seem to care very much. Every one is too excited to be tired, and too merry to be formal. All the stiffness of your escort's manner has gone with that of his collar. As he offers his arm this time he does not gaze straight ahead of him and murmur something incoherent about hoping that you are going to enjoy this, for he begins singing "It's all over now," to the dank and misty campus trees on the way to University Hall, and you give him permission to smoke a cigarette, and shout good-night down the stairs, and tell him what time to call around in the morning--later on in the morning--for he has made you promise to stay over all of the following day and see a little of the college and campus, and take a stroll in the queer old town.

Then, as the gray dawn creeps in through the dotted Swiss curtains which somebody made for the freshman who owns the room, causing the roses on the bureau to look pale and livid, and while the far-away voices of the dance committee can be heard from back of Witherspoon, where they are having an informal game of baseball in their evening clothes to celebrate the success of their efforts, and the sparrows outside your window begin to twitter as though there had been no dance, you lay your head upon the pillow and tell your roommate what the tall one said who danced the two-step so divinely, and what that funny little fellow with frowsy hair told you, and what were the remarks of the football man with whom you sat out two dances, and how the entertaining man who sang the solo at the concert seemed to like you, and what your brother's roommate told you not to tell.

THE LITTLE TUTOR

At first they thought he was one of the new students, he was such a little fellow and had such a smooth, boyish face. And one of the college men had stopped him on the street, and, in a manner that seemed to indicate that he had some particular reason for desiring the information, asked him abruptly: "What class do you belong to?"

The little tutor had looked up timidly through his large spectacles and answered, in his thin, high voice: "I am not a member of any of the classes. I am to be one of the instructors in the academy."