That was just what Young, with teeth set and nostrils distended, was proceeding to do, though not because they told him to, for he was now oblivious to everything but showing Ballard that there was a limit to hazing and to Freshman meekness!
Up went Ballard's legs in the air once more with the enraged Freshman's long, strong arms locked tightly about him. And again he came down hard upon the ground. And he had barely got to his feet when in rushed the Freshman again with his head down, and for the third time Ballard was thrown flat and fair. This time it was in the gutter, and it was lucky for Ballard that it was full of leaves, for Young fell heavily on top of him.
Up to this point Ballard's classmates had been busy keeping out of the way of his whirling heels. Now they began to realize that they were becoming disgraced; something must be done. Channing was calling,excitedly, "Get in there, somebody; don't let a Freshman do that, fellows," while he himself kept well out of the way.
Perhaps they did not admire Ballard for what he had done, but he was their classmate. One of the bigger fellows dashed in and got Young by the legs and began to pull. Quick as a flash little Lee ran in and immediately tripped him up. No one had been watching Lee. Another Soph. slipped in and pulled Lee off. A couple of them held him. Then the others began grabbing Young's arms and legs. He held on like a bull-dog. One man was sitting on his head. Two were on his body. Ballard was wriggling and swearing. He got one arm over Young's neck.
"Here, here, give the Freshman a show; give him fair play!" cried some authoritative voices. It was some Juniors and Seniors hurrying out from University Hall—some half-dressed and some not dressed at all.
They ran across the street and brushed Sophomores right and left, saying, "Get off there—get off there, I tell you!"
Some Sophomores jumped up; others were pulled off.
"Ballard has hurt his ankle! Ballard has hurt his ankle—let him up." It was Channing's shrill voice.
"Well, if he's hurt let him up," said the Juniors. The Freshman was still on top.
"Get off, Freshman, you did him; Ballard has hurt his ankle."
Young jumped up quickly. "Is he hurt?" he asked, panting, and looking around; he was amazed to see so many people about him. He had an ugly bruise under his left eye, where Ballard had hit him; he didn't feel it now.
Ballard had hastily jumped up. He did not look at Young; he did not say a word. He was panting hard; he leaned on Channing's arm and limped quickly and quietly away. The other Sophomores followed behind; none of them looked back. There was a dramatic silence.
"He's not much hurt," said a Junior who knew Ballard of old, and he was right, for before the Sophomores quite reached thecorner Ballard had stopped limping and was walking as well as anybody. "Say, Channing," another upper-classman called after them, "how about that spanking?" and before the small Sophomore was out of earshot he had the pleasure of hearing the upper-classman begin a narration which was received with squeals and shouts of laughter.
MEEK BUTT OF ALL CLASSES!MEEK BUTT OF ALL CLASSES!Before curfew rang in Old North at the close of that day the whole college was talking about it.
Meanwhile Young, in the centre of another ring, was sitting on the curbstone panting like a good fellow. Lee was bending over him mopping his face with his own handkerchief and patting him on the back and laughing excitedly.
"Are you hurt, old man?" asked one of the Juniors.
Young shook his head.
"What's his name?" asked one of the others.
"Young's his name," answered little Lee, proudly, like the exhibitor of something rare.
"Well, he's a good one," said one of the new arrivals. Others were hurrying down the steps of University Hall and across the street every moment; they all asked questions.Several of the first arrivals were telling the new arrivals all about it, with gestures.
"Tried to make the big fellow paste procs," one man was saying, while another was crying: "But you ought to have seen that beautiful spanking last night! Oh, dear! I'll never forget Channing's look when...."
The big roll of proclamations, by the way, which had been lying on the ground, had disappeared. Some of the new arrivals were Freshmen, and Lee, who had hidden it under his coat, gave it to them to carry away. First they tore down all the procs that were in sight. A Junior picking up a piece was reading aloud, "the meek butt of all classes."
"This is 'the meek butt of all classes,'" said Lee, laughing.
Young got up from the curbstone.
"Come on, Lucky," he said, "we'll have to hurry to meet those other fellows on the way from Trenton."
Lee tried to help him up; Young would not allow it. But as they started off Lee insisted on putting his arm about him.
"What! that big, awkward-looking chap?" Young heard a new arrival ask one of the others. Then just as they reached the corner Lee and Young suddenly heard:
"Ray, ray, ray! Tiger, siss, boom, ah! 'Meek butt of all classes!'" It was the Juniors giving a cheer for him in the early dawn.
Lee turned around and waved his hand at them. Young blushed, but did not turn his head. Lee reached up and lifted Young's hat to them, which made the others laugh. It made Young laugh a little, too. Then they turned the corner and were out of the crowd.
Before curfew rang in Old North at the close of that day the whole college was talking about it: "Big green Freshman ... thought he didn't dare say his soul was his own.... That irrepressible little Channing, first ... worm turned ... yes, on the third floor of University—Bob Ellis saw the whole thing himself ... caught big Freshman this morning with Lee—yes, that nice little fellow.... Sophs undertookto make him paste procs—no, Lee first.... Little one was game.... Big Bally—yes, went at Lee.... Big Freshman turned on Bally—Bally punched him—um, right up here, under eye, a nasty one—then big, meek Freshman.... Oh, my! lovely!——"
Only in the telling it became twenty or thirty Sophomores, and it was over a fence that Ballard was thrown.
Deacon Young was a hero now.
Several weeks had passed since Deacon Young had become a class hero, and a great many things had happened.
The Freshmen had published and posted their own proclamations since then (with a good crack on a man named Ballard), and the Sophomores had torn them down, long ago. The Ninety-blank class football team had been started, and Young was trying for the position of right guard—and finding football not so much a matter of mere muscle as it looked; the class glee club had been organized; a great many friendships had begun; nearly everybody had joined Whig or Clio Hall (whether they cared to debate or not); and they were all becoming thoroughly accustomed to being at college and had begun to love it. But Freshman Young was not yetaccustomed to having people treat him with so much consideration, and he did not know quite what to make of it.
It was still amazing to him that such a comparatively small matter could make such a difference in the way he was regarded. One day he was the most obscure and despised man in the Freshman class, and the next day—he was the most talked of character on the campus. He did not wake up to find himself famous; he had become famous all in a minute, before he had a chance to go to sleep. Ever since, it had been, "How are you, old man," from the very ones who used to laugh and say, "Here comes 'Thank you marm.'" Prominent fellows in the class who formerly merely nodded to him, said, "You must drop up to my room some evening." The Sophomores bothered him no more; Channing and Ballard—somehow they were always looking in the other direction when Young met them on the walk. Even upper-classmen said, "Hello there, Young," condescendingly but pleasantly, and that fellow Linton stopped him one day and congratulatedhim. "Only," he added, puffing his pipe, "only don't get stuck on yourself, Young."
"Hello-o-o, Deacon, hold up a minute," called Minerva Powelton one day on the way from Recitation Hall. "Say, Deacon, old man, come over to my room, I want to talk to you." He threw an arm carelessly over one of the Deacon's good shoulders.
"It's about something important," he said in an undertone as they passed between the Bulletin Elm and Old Chapel, where the crowd was always thickest. More than one Freshman, looking on, wished he could be on such familiar footing with Young. There were others who wished they could be thus sought out by Powelton.
It was right here, Young remembered, Powelton put this same arm in the same way about Lee that day he first heard about the proclamations. Powelton ignored Young that day. But that was before the Ballard episode.
"Deacon," said Powelton, when they had reached the latter's room—everyone calledhim "Deacon" now, and he liked it—"a crowd of us fellows are getting up a new eating-club, so we can all be together; at present, you know, the gang is scattered all over town. We thought we'd go some place where we could have an extra room to loaf and read the papers in, like the upper-classmen clubs, besides getting better grub, even if we have to pay a little more for it. There'll be Lucky, of course, and Stevie and Todd—Polk would come, only he has been taken to the 'Varsity training table" (that was the football man who was next to Young in the rush), "and White, and, well the whole gang of us, you know, and we want you to join us. It's the best crowd in the class, all right enough, even if I do say it myself."
"Much obliged for asking me," Young interrupted, "but I can't afford it."
A few weeks ago Young would have given some other excuse, or would have blushed and hemmed and hawed before he got out this one. And a few weeks before, the other Freshman might not have known howto reply to it: but they had both gained some new ideas since they came to college, and also had lost some old ones, which is equally important.
"Lucky told me you were hard up this year," Powelton said, as if he were often equally hard up himself. "As I was going on to ask, what would you say to managing the club—would you mind the bother? Then it wouldn't cost you a cent. It wouldn't be much bother. Somebody's got to run it, and we want somebody that's congenial. Come on, won't you?"
"Well, Minerva," said Young, finally, "I'll think about it and tell you."
"That's right. Think it over. You've got a week to make up your mind in. So long."
"Thank you for asking me. Good-by."
Young had no objections to managing a club; that was not the reason he hesitated. It was because he did not agree with Powelton that the fellows named were the best crowd in the class. In fact, he did not approve of most of them, and some of themseemed not to realize what they had been sent to college for.
He walked on to his room, debating the matter, and finally wrote a letter to his mother.
"Dear Mother:"... The sixteen fellows composing the proposed club are the most prominent men in the class. It is a great compliment to be asked to join them, I suppose, and what is more important, I should be saving money by it. But although they are all nice to me, I do not altogether like them—except that little fellow, Lee, I told you about, and one or two others."To be sure, I do not know much about them, but I know enough to know they do not study much—or 'pole,' as we call it—and more than that, some of them—well, I don't think you would like them. Now my friends at my present eating-club all study hard and have a definite aim in life. They are helpful and congenial friends. I should not like to leave them. They say they would hate to have me go, too. But they also say I would be foolish, for financial reasons, not to accept the offer."
"Dear Mother:
"... The sixteen fellows composing the proposed club are the most prominent men in the class. It is a great compliment to be asked to join them, I suppose, and what is more important, I should be saving money by it. But although they are all nice to me, I do not altogether like them—except that little fellow, Lee, I told you about, and one or two others.
"To be sure, I do not know much about them, but I know enough to know they do not study much—or 'pole,' as we call it—and more than that, some of them—well, I don't think you would like them. Now my friends at my present eating-club all study hard and have a definite aim in life. They are helpful and congenial friends. I should not like to leave them. They say they would hate to have me go, too. But they also say I would be foolish, for financial reasons, not to accept the offer."
When Mrs. Young read this letter, she at first wanted to say, "keep out of fast company, whatever you do!" But on second thoughts she saw that if Will did not embracethis opportunity he might not be able to stay in college at all—and as for the new associates, she knew that her boy was no weakling. Finally she agreed with Will's friends that he would be foolish to let the chance go by, and wrote immediately, saying so. "And your own conduct will be a good example to the others," she wrote.
Will had already made up his mind that way before receiving this letter, and felt so glad and relieved about it that he played very well at right guard that day; twice he broke through and stopped the opposing quarter-back from passing the ball, and was duly applauded by those watching from the terrace behind Witherspoon Hall. He was commended even by Nolan, the Junior who coached the team. "Now that you're learning to use your weight," said Nolan, "you're improving a little. By next year you will know something about the game; by Junior year you might run a chance of making the 'Varsity." And this was a good deal for a reserved man like Nolan to say, and quite enough to make Young'sheart beat faster, though it was going pretty fast already from the hard exercise.
"Wait a minute, Young," said the Freshman captain, "we're going to let you stay at right guard. Come up to my room to-night and get measured for your suit." This meant that he was no longer trying for the Freshman eleven, but had earned his place upon it. So he dog-trotted back to his room, feeling exuberant and strong and hopeful, and very glad that he had determined to run the new club. "Well, it's beginning to look now as if I might get through the year," he said to himself as he jogged along. "Haven't any board to pay now, and if I get through this year, I guess I can manage as a Sophomore all right. There's the Freshman $200 prize—I run a chance at winning that at the end of the year; and I'll still have this club next year. I'll still have tuition remitted. Perhaps I can get one of those rooms in Old North: the rent is free there, and the rooms are big, too; and maybe I can get some newspapers to correspond for, or else I can get some tutoring. Oh, I'll managesomehow, all right, if I'm careful. Then, what'll father say?"
Panting and perspiring he hurried upstairs to his room, sponged off and rubbed down with witch-hazel, put on dry clothes, and then walked over to the club—the old club still; the new one was not to begin till next week—glowing and glad to be alive.
They all shouted, "Yea-a-a, Deacon!" at him when he came in, and jumped up to congratulate him on making the team and pounded him on the back, for Barrows had overheard what the captain said. Young could tell from their manner that they were genuinely glad of his success.
After eating a huge meal with his congenial clubmates he returned to his room, spent a studious evening with Xenophon, went to bed and slept like a bear, or rather like a healthy young athlete that is in perfect condition and has a clear conscience. Oh, these were happy days!
The next day Young made the arrangements with a woman in Nassau Street who was famous for good cooking, secured twofine front rooms, subscribed for a number of New York and Philadelphia daily papers, and showed Powelton, the president of the club, and the other members of the Board of Directors, how skilful he was in business affairs. His experience in the bank helped him here.
"THE INVINCIBLES.""THE INVINCIBLES."They had a dignified negro waiter, and they dined in the evening and it all seemed very fine and luxurious.
On the following Wednesday he took his place at the head of the table. "The Invincibles" the club called itself, and they had a dignified negro waiter and they dined in the evening, and it all seemed very fine and luxurious to Young. He missed Barrows and old Jim Wilson, the long, thin fellow who was studying for the ministry, and he felt a little abashed at first before these more noisy, jolly fellows. He was afraid they would think him very green.
But they respected him all the more for being quiet, and his soberness of mien, which had formerly made him ridiculous, now impressed these fellows as something fine. They were younger than he.
"He doesn't say much," one of them remarked after the first day at the new club.
"No," said another, "but when the time comes he can act."
"He's matured, and has reserved strength and all that. You can see it in his face." That was Lucky Lee, who had reason for admiring Young's strength.
Naturally it was quite flattering to Young—and so it would be to you or me—to find these fellows of whom he had been half afraid, treating him as if they were half afraid of him. He could not help discerning how pleased some of the younger members were to find themselves walking to chapel or recitation with the right guard of the class team—"the man that did up Ballard." Nor could he help being pleased at it.
And, Young soon decided, they were not such a bad lot as he had at first thought. Undoubtedly they were not a poling crowd and perhaps some of them were "sporty," but not so many of them as he had feared. College was a great place to broaden your mind, he concluded.
However, as he remarked to some of his former clubmates, when they asked how heliked the new crowd: "They may be doing a great many things when I'm not around that I don't know anything about. Sometimes at the other end of the table they make references to things, and they seem not to want me to understand. I know the other day when I came in late from football practice, I heard one of 'em say, 'Shut up, Billy, here comes the Deacon!'"
And this shows why Wilson, the man studying for the ministry, told Young, when alone, "Deacon, you have an excellent opportunity for exercising a steadying, sobering influence upon that set of gay, thoughtless fellows—they all respect you heartily."
The Divisional examinations came along soon after the organization of the club, and Young was in great demand by those taking the academic course like himself. Few of the Invincibles had studied conscientiously during the preceding weeks. They had rather prided themselves on not being "greasy polers" as they called fellows like Young's former clubmates, but now theywere all poling at a great rate themselves, and some of them declared they would not get through, though to Young's amazement they seemed not to care whether they were to be conditioned or not; they considered it a joke.
Perhaps one or two of them would not have passed, if it had not been for Young. "The old Deacon is a valuable man to have around," said Billy Drew. Most of them landed in the lower divisions, but one of them proved quite a wonder to Young. His name was Todd, and he had never opened a book, apparently, since the term began. To Young's knowledge he took long walks into the country—up over the hills to the north of town—every afternoon after examination instead of studying, and invariably he was the first to finish his paper and leave the examination-room. And yet when the lists of divisions were posted, much to everyone's surprise, Todd's name was in the First division—along with Young's.
They jokingly called him "Poler Todd," and made him treat the whole club to cigarson the way back from dinner. Apparently he was as much surprised as anyone, but he seemed not to care very much, and the dignified Deacon did not know what to make of him. Young himself felt very much gratified over his success and wrote home to the minister about it, and confided to him, that he was going to try to capture the Freshman First Honor prize. The minister wrote back a fine, long letter, wishing him success and congratulating him on his progress, and also upon his making the team. Will had no idea the minister would be so pleased over athletic success.
So, every day now it was, "Deacon, how many lines of Homer do we have to-day?" "How do you demonstrate this, Deacon?"
At first he liked to have them appeal to him, but after awhile it became a little tiresome; not that he minded the trouble—it was no trouble; but he did not like to be thought of only as a man who always knew where the lesson was. He began to wish they would treat him more in the hail-fellow well-met way they treated each other.With Todd, for instance, they were as familiar and free and easy as they were with Billy Drew, and yet Todd was a First division man, like Young. Sometimes he found himself watching them after dinner, and it was a matter of wonder to him how Todd could always answer Powelton back, with a witty piece of repartee, quick as a flash, without looking up from the dessert-plate at which he was aiming tobacco-smoke. Somehow, Will thought, he would like to be able to do that way.
The truth was they did not dare to be familiar with Young; they respected him too much. Sometimes he felt tired of cold respect and wanted warm liking.
You see he was a hero to these boys. You and I know that he was made of flesh and blood, and weakness and strength, like the rest of us.
The great Yale-Princeton football game, which took place during the Thanksgiving holidays in New York, was now a matter of history—and of rejoicing, to one side. But as all those interested in football know which side won the championship that year, it is not necessary to recount the game and rub it into the losers.
Everyone, almost, had gone to see the great contest and to cheer for the team, and Princeton seemed as deserted as in mid-summer. The Invincibles secured a huge four-in-hand coach and were half frozen driving up Fifth Avenue to the game; but they had the privilege, granted to Freshmen on such occasions only, of wearing the sacred orange and black—yards of it, hung all over their hats, their clothes, the coach, the driver, and the horses.They cheered themselves voiceless, and had a time they were never to forget.
The Freshman team had played the Columbia University Freshmen in the morning, and had no difficulty in defeating them by a large score. Right Guard Young put up a very fair, steady game, the critics said, but had no chance to make any brilliant play, as he had hoped.
But the Deacon felt very big and important when his exultant classmates ran out at the close of the game and carried him and the rest of the eleven off the field on their shoulders, cheering for each player by name.
He felt less important in the afternoon, when the great contest, the event of the day, took place; he wondered if many of those flocking in realized that he was Right Guard Young of the Freshman team; again he feared that he looked like the big green farmer that he did not want people to think he was.
The enormous grand-stands and bleachers, and the coaches and carriages, and even the neighboring houses were jammed with thousandsand thousands of eager human beings, wearing violets or chrysanthemums; and some of the old grads had come from as far as the Pacific coast to see this manly match, which was to decide the championship of the two best football teams in the western hemisphere. Young had never before seen so many people at once—"more than the population of the whole county you're in," he wrote to his brother Charlie—and never before had he been so thrilled as when long Jack Stehman made his famous tackle after that Yale half-back had dodged past all the rest of the Princeton team.... But the game and its noise and victory and defeat were all over now, and the two universities had returned to go on where each had left off before Thanksgiving.
Big Freshman Young had to go on along very pleasant lines, enviable lines they seemed to many a Freshman who longed in vain to be prominent and popular, and a member of the dashing Invincibles; but the Deacon had his worries. It had been veryfine at first to be looked up to and admired, but the novelty had worn off by this time, and he had been hoping and hoping that his table-mates would soon begin to act toward him in the same easy, familiar, good-fellow way they acted toward each other. Why they had not, he failed to understand; he knew it wasn't because he was poor and ran the club; he wondered if it was because he had not prepared for college at a large school, and hence was green and ignorant of the ways of the world. That was one of the things that had off and on worried him, but that was not the worst; that was not what was making him stay awake at night thinking. It was that alarming question of money bobbing up again.
He had supposed that with the club to run, which wiped out the largest item of expense, he would have enough to worry along with until something else turned up. But his account in the Princeton bank was slowly but surely being drained, and thus far nothing had turned up.
He had intended to be more economical,but—well, for instance, the other Invincibles were always "blowing in" money for spreads in their rooms and all that; and Young did not like to accept favors without returning them. To be sure he might have declined their invitations occasionally, but he wanted to show them that the "dignified Deacon," as they called him, was not so terribly dignified and stiff, as they seemed to think. Then, too, when subscription lists were passed around for various purposes, and they came to him among the first as "one of the influential men of Ninety-blank," he felt that he ought to do his share; "it's my duty to the good old class," he said, "I hate stinginess, anyway."
As a matter of fact he had been doing more than his share, and it was the appearance of stinginess, possibly, that he hated even more than stinginess itself.
Now, he might easily have said: "Here, I can't afford this pace; you fellows get money from home—I have to earn mine, and so, much as I'd like to, I simply can't keep step with you—and that's all there is about it;"he would have been liked none the less and respected all the more. "Why, certainly; you are dead right," they would have said. But he did not want to; he preferred to keep step, and did not like them to know how little money he had. It was nothing to be ashamed of, surely. It was not on account of money, as his own experience had shown him, that a man became popular or prominent.
More money had gone when he went to New York at Thanksgiving time. His expenses up and back were paid, of course, by the Freshman football fund, but Lucky Lee had invited him to stay over Sunday at his home there; and Young felt ashamed of his cut-away coat—though Lucky said, "Nonsense"—and so he bought something which he considered very magnificent at a large ready-made place on Broadway, together with some brilliant neckties, something like Billy Drew's, and a huge scarf-pin (but decided not to tell his mother how much they all cost, in the letter describing what a good time he had and how nice Mrs. Lee was).
So, altogether, with the new term staring him in the face, and room-rent to pay, and books—though that was a small item compared to what he had "blown in" foolishly—it was beginning to look as if Deacon Young would have to hustle if he meant to stay in college much longer. "We'll see how long you stay there," his father had said.
"All right," thought Will, "we'll see! More fellows earn their way through college than the people out home have any idea of, and I think I'm as good as the next man. I'll talk to Barrows and Wilson and some of those quiet fellows about it."
But it was all very well to say: "Why, there's Dougal Davis in the Junior class who commands $2.50 an hour for tutoring, and there's Harris, the Senior, who sometimes makes as much as $20 in a week writing for the New York and Philadelphia papers;" it was easy enough to point out how many men made money in various other ways; no doubt many did; but that was just the trouble—so many did that all the opportunities seemed to be snapped up already.
Now, a year hence, if he won the Freshman First Honor prize, he would not only have the $200 but, in consequence of his high stand, he could get all the tutoring he would want; but this year he was still a Freshman and there was no class below him to tutor. Next year, also, he would have some of those newspaper correspondences of Harris's. Young had already arranged for that—but this year Harris was still in college. Young might also get the agency for shoes, or athletic goods, or photographic supplies next year, or possibly the contract for issuing the programmes of the baseball and football and track athletic games; or, he might, as a Sophomore, publish syllabuses of the lecture courses (and sell them for a dollar each). In fact, now that he was on the field, he saw more ways of earning money while getting a college education than he had dreamed of—hundreds of ways, very good ways, if only he had hustled and availed himself of them at the beginning of the term. Other Freshmen had secured the jobs of distributing theDaily PrincetonianandThe Nassau Literary MagazineandThe Tiger, or had taken the agency for steam-laundries at Trenton, and so on, and so on, while he, who needed money more than most of them, had only spent it foolishly, had not earned a cent, had not done a thing for himself, but accept the club management which had, so to speak, been thrown into his lap—and this is what he kept telling himself as he walked to and from recitations, and repeated when he went to bed at night, and remembered when he awoke in the morning ... until—how time flies at college!—Christmas vacation was only a week off and still nothing had turned up. He couldn't go through another term this way.
Meanwhile what made it all the harder for Young was to watch the ease with which Lee and Powelton and the others with whom he sat down three times a day at the club, received their comfortable allowances from home.
"Ah!" they would say, cheerfully, when a check came fluttering out of a letter. Allthey had to do to get money was to open envelopes and then sign their names. "You fellows," Young used to think as he watched them—"You fellows don't know how lucky you are." But of course he said nothing to them of what worried him. He was not that kind. They had great respect for his abilities and thought he could do anything. They did not guess what was going on in his mind these days, while they talked of the fun they were going to have during the holidays. "I can't bear to think of your being away from us at Christmas," wrote the Deacon's mother. "Perhaps," said Young to himself, "I sha'n't be away, after all."
Then he wondered what the fellows would think and what the people "out home" would say.
He knew just how his father would laugh at him, remarking, "I told you so," and how his mother, who kept everyone informed of how Will was getting on at college, would cry; for it would be as great a disappointment to her as to him. It would surpriseher, too, for he had not let her know how much he had spent, telling himself that it would only worry her unnecessarily, that when the time came he would pitch in and do something.
"Deacon," said Lucky Lee on the way to luncheon, "you're to come home with me for the holidays—at least mother says so in this letter. Course, I don't want you, but I'll obey my mother."
The sober Deacon laughed at the pleasantry, and thanked Lucky, but shook his head at the little fellow's repeated importunities. Young felt that he couldn't afford even to buy a ticket to New York and back.
His excuses were so lame, however, that the bright-eyed little Lucky suddenly got an inkling of what was the trouble. "Say, Deacon," he began when they were alone, "if you should ever get hard up, I hope you have decency enough to give your friends a chance to——"
Young blushed and shook his head.
"I don't mean particularly about this vacation," Lucky went on. "You're cominghome with me all right, if I have to carry you on my back all the way. I mean in general. For instance, if you—er—that is, well, blame it, we're good enough friends. If you are 'temporarily embarrassed,' as they say, when you come back after Christmas, you'll do what I would do if I were hard up, won't you? If you wouldn't you're no friend of mine."
"What would you do, Lucky?"
"I'd let you lend me some dough—naturally."
Young hesitated. "Lucky," he said, "I am hard up—don't tell anybody, but I'm mighty hard up. I'd rather leave college, though, than borrow money to stay here with."
But Young spent Christmas holidays with Lucky Lee in New York, and it turned out to be a very good thing that he did—not only on account of the temporary rest from worry.
"Business is the systematic supplying of wants. When all visible wants are supplied, you must simply create new wants to satisfy. Patient willingness to do whatever turns up will only bring success when things turn up. Under the conditions of modern competition things seldom turn up of themselves."
Mr. Lee, Lucky's father, had said this one evening after dinner during the happy holidays; and Will remembered every word of it, not only because he had great respect for successful Mr. Lee's opinions, but because what he said seemed to apply to his own quandary. Mr. Lee seemed to have taken a fancy to Young, and talked to him frequently. Mrs. Lee liked him, too. She seemed to consider his preferring to eat his peas with a spoon a very small matter (thoughWill himself blushed scarlet when he discovered his mistake). She said she was glad her son had chosen for one of his intimate friends a young man with so much maturity and character—this she said to Young himself—"And I know you will look after him," she said; "he's such an impressionable boy, but he admires you so much that you can influence him any way you desire."
The Deacon blushed and said he would try, but what Lucky's father said made more impression upon him at the time.
"When all the wants are satisfied you must simply create new wants." It seemed to Young that this ought to apply to the little world of college quite as well as to the big world of commerce of which Mr. Lee spoke. Every day as he walked to and from recitations through the campus, now muddy and monotonous after a wet snow, Young tried and tried and tried to think of some new want to satisfy.
Lucky said he was trying, too; but generally he forgot as soon as anyone yelled, "Hold up, there, Lucky!" and joined himon the walk. It did not mean so much to him.
The Deacon was walking past Old Jimmy, the peanut-and fruit-vender, when the idea came to him. He suddenly stopped short, slapped his thigh, and said: "I've got it! I've got it!" That night he unfolded his scheme to Lucky, whose eyes grew big.
"Deacon, you're a dandy! But, say, are you sure it'll work?"
"Sure? No, I'm not sure it'll make much. But I'm sure I'll have to leave college, anyway, if I don't do something, and——"
"But why go to all the expense of the posters?"
"To advertise it, get 'em talking, create the want! That's the way to do business. And just now everything is dull in the college world—no athletics to distract attention."
"Well, I'll help you stick 'em up. It'll remind us of pasting procs, eh?"
One morning, a few days later, the whole University, on its way to and from recitationsand lectures, saw a poster on the Bulletin Elm. It had two black letters on it, C. C. There was nothing else there. They glanced at it, wondered what it meant, and passed on.
The next day a new one was there in letters twice as big, C. C. Again the college wondered what it meant; but this time some of them did not pass on until they had asked someone else, "What's that thing for?" "What's the meaning of that?" No one could answer.
A snow-storm washed it off during the afternoon.
A fresh one was put up the next morning.
"Here's that queer poster again," said the passers-by. "What's it for, anyway?"
"Nobody seems to know."
The next morning the same letters on larger-sized paper were found not only on the bulletin-board, but tacked up on all the available trees of the campus, and in the town on all the billboards, old barrels, tumble-down sheds, and stalled wagons. On the way to recitation, or lectures, every one saw C. C. half a dozen times. They saw it onthe tree-boxes along the street. When they took walks they saw it on old barns down toward Kingston.
Now at Princeton, what there is of a town is little more than a setting for the University. There are no outside distractions, such as theatres and the like, as at most large institutions of learning. The campus life is the only life, and the college students are dependent upon the college world for all their amusements and between-hour interests. Everyone keeps in touch with everything that is going on.
So when this poster with its brief legend continued to appear and reappear every day, and no one deciphered its meaning, the college began to get interested—all the more so because it was midwinter, and therefore neither football nor baseball was absorbing the undergraduate interest.
"What's going to happen?" everyone asked. "What's the meaning of this mystery?" And no one could answer.
The thing had now kept up for over a week. TheDaily Princetoniancommentedupon it. Even the faculty began to inquire, in a dignified way, as to "the meaning of those cabalistic symbols." The undergraduates had begun to make up words to fit, and rumors floated about the campus. "C. C.—college clowns," said someone; "it's to be a horse minstrel troupe."
"No, that's not it," said another, "it's Curious Customs:—a new book by a member of the faculty."
"What nonsense!" sneered a wise Senior, "it's only a hoax perpetrated by some under-classmen who think themselves funny; it isn't worth talking about," and he went on down to the club and talked half through dinner about it himself.
Those who considered themselves humorous began to make jokes about it. "Look, here," one would say, and the other would reply, "I C. C."
And now suddenly the posters disappeared. None could be found in any part of the town; Bronson, a Junior, paid half a dollar for one to put in his scrap-book. "What's become of it!" they asked.
"C. C.—can't come," answered a funny man.
They were still talking about its disappearance when, a few days later, the posters again appeared, more of them than ever, and this time it was a poster to make the undergraduate world excited. It was in the college colors, for one thing, the paper being orange and the letters black. That alone was enough to lend fresh interest, but that was not the most important change. Under the letters C. C. were the words:
The Cannon is the centre of the front quadrangle and the hub of the campus life. At half-past twelve o'clock all the morning lectures and recitations of both upper and lower classes are over, and no one has anything immediate to attend to. The next day, by the time the bell in the Old North had finished announcing the noon hour, nearly the whole university found it convenient to be in the neighborhood of the Cannon.
Old Jimmy Johnson, the ancient negro fruit-and peanut-vender, stood beside the Cannon, against which leaned his wheelbarrow heaped high with a mass of small orange-and-black objects, and over them waved an orange banner on which were two big black letters, C. C. That was all there was to look at; and old Jimmy was as silent and bored-looking as ever.
The crowd drew nearer. The orange-and-black things were small pasteboard boxes, shaped like miniature bricks. On one side of them was printed these words, "Made from the purest materials, in the most careful manner, by a secret receipt in the possession of Fraulein Hummel of New York." On the other side appeared the words, "Delicious College Caramels, five cents a box," and on either end, "C. C." Old Jimmy kept on looking solemn and silent.
At first the crowd seemed inclined to laugh—not at Jimmy or his load so much as at themselves, for being so worked up over a small affair. "Is that all it is?" everyonethought, and some noisy Sophomores began to shout, in loud voices, "Sold!" "Leg-pull! Leg-pull!" "Let's go," said someone else; "all over!"
But curiosity had been whetted too strongly during the past fortnight not to have it satisfied as fully as possible. Besides, the boxes looked very neat, and the simple inscription on them sounded very attractive. Also it was several hours since breakfast; a number of fellows were observed to swallow something when reading the word "delicious."
First, three jocular Juniors, who prided themselves on always doing as they pleased, strode over to Jimmy's wheelbarrow, arm in arm, announcing to everybody as they did so, "We are going to have some C. C. We must have C. C.," and bought a box, which they proceeded to open, and the contents of which they ostentatiously and with much smacking of lips devoured before the assembled crowed.
"Oh, we like C. C.!" shouted the three Juniors. "Give us some more, Jimmy," and then they marched through the crowdmunching and saying, "We are the first to see C. C. We are the first to see C. C. Three cheers for C. C.!"
By this time several other Juniors, grinning to show they, too, were joking, went over to the wheelbarrow and put down five cents each.
Then other Juniors, then some of the Sophomores—who always like to do what Juniors do—and after that a few Freshmen, made bold to approach the wheelbarrow, and finally even a Senior or two, "just to see what they were like, anyway," sampled C. C., and they immediately stopped looking superior and remarked, "By Jove, they are good! Try them."
That was what everybody seemed to think, for within half an hour old black Jimmy, who almost turned white making change, found his wheelbarrow empty, and went toddling off to have it replenished; while the undergraduate body of the University of Princeton strolled off to its mid-day meal, chewing.
Two of the crowd who lagged behindseemed pleased about something, and one was quietly punching the other in the ribs, and saying: "Well, well! Deacon, well, well! Your little scheme is certainly working, in spite of my prediction. I hope it will keep on working."
"Stop punching me, Lucky!" the Deacon said, but he laughed excitedly in spite of himself. "It'll keep on working all right, you see if it doesn't. There wasn't any good candy here, and all this needed was an introduction."
"Aren't you glad now you went home Christmas with me?" said Lucky, exultingly; "otherwise you wouldn't have heard us talking about that old woman and her bully caramels."
For a week or so C. C.'s were sold as fast as they could be supplied. They had become "the thing." Students munched them in their rooms, during their walks, on the way to lecture-rooms, and even inside. They sent them home to their sisters and to their roommates' sisters. They told the story in their letters, and their friends sent stamps andrequests for other packages of "those delicious things."
Of course the first boom died down, as Young knew it would; but there remained a good, steady, normal demand for them, and before long he had cleared, in all, $150.
"Now," thought Will Young, "I am going to lean back and enjoy life like Todd and the rest of them. Seems to me I have a right to."
Of course it had leaked out by this time, as such things always do, who was at the bottom of the C. C. business, and the college said: "What! that big, sober-looking green Freshman that did up Ballard? He's quite a boy, isn't he?"
Now, when this got around to the Invincibles, and so to Will Young, he only scowled and thought: "I don't see why they still call me green. I should think by this time"—then he looked down the table. "Are you coming up to get in the game this evening?" he heard Billy Drew murmur to Minerva Powelton.
They did not ask the Deacon, and forsome reason the Deacon resented it. Why? A few months ago he would have resented it if they had asked him.
One wet, muddy day toward the end of the winter two dignified Juniors, Jimmy Linton, the philosopher, and Billy Nolan, the football man, were walking across the quadrangle to a four o'clock lecture.
"Billy," said Linton, "a Freshman is a funny thing. You never can tell how they are going to turn out. See that fellow ahead there?"
"Why, that's Young the Freshman guard. Say, Jim, that boy's going to make the Varsity before he gets out of college."
Linton said, "He may make the team, but he's going to make a fool of himself first."
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, it's the same old story," Linton smiled. "He's in with a sporty crowd and is beginning to try to act the way they do. He's a Freshman."
Nolan shook his head. "You're stuck on your ability to size people up, but I don't believe Young's that sort of a fool."
"No, and he doesn't, either. That's just the trouble. It's coming on him unconsciously. You see he's heard his table-mates talk so much about things he used to abhor that he's got accustomed to them, and he's ceased to abhor them. But he doesn't stop there; they seldom do, you know. You can tell by his walk that his way of looking at things has changed."
"But, Jim, Young's not such a kid."
"He wouldn't be, but, you see, he's had too much success in too many ways—it has dazzled and rattled the young man from the country. Success has turned his head. He's flattered at being taken up by these prominent young sporty Freshmen, and he doesn't know how to let well enough alone."
"You mean——"
"I mean that he wants to get clear 'in it.' He doesn't want to be considered a big, green giant. He wants to make himself like the rest of the—Invincibles, I think they call themselves. That is the way to be a college man, he thinks."
"Well," said Nolan, "can you account forthe way people in general, not only here in college, but in the big, outside world—people that ought to know better, people you'd never expect it of—can you account for their making fools of 'emselves to stand in with the crowd? Asses!"
Then these two moralizers changed the subject to baseball. Both thought of taking an early opportunity of giving the big Freshman a friendly tip, for they knew him well enough by this time. And both went off and forgot; and if it recurred to them, they put it off till they "felt more like it."
What had Deacon Young actually done? Oh, nothing at all, or next to nothing. Billy Drew one morning at breakfast was telling about his experience of the night before, and then stopped suddenly when Young entered the room.
"Go on, I want to hear the rest of it," said the Deacon, smiling broadly. "I heard the first part while I was taking off my coat in the hall. Go on." So Drew went on in the grinning, boastful way of a certain sort of Freshman, with his account of how he fellupstairs, and how he tried to catch the bed as it whirled around.
Some of them began to chuckle. Lucky Lee looked at Young; so did one or two of the others. Young knew they were looking at him. Here was his chance to show them he was not so stiff and sober and green as they imagined. He leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily. Then Lucky Lee and the rest of the table laughed heartily.
And after that no one took pains to keep things away from the Deacon again. That seems a very little thing, but, as Linton said, he was not very likely to stop there.
The winter, with its jolly long evenings about cosey fire-places, was over, and the Freshman-Sophomore snowball fight was almost forgotten. The University baseball candidates had left the "Cage" and were practising outdoors on the diamond. The glorious spring term had come, and the Seniors had begun twilight singing on the steps of Old North. The elms were putting on their new leaves; the undergraduates their new flannel trousers.
The Invincibles were on their way from the club, to stretch out under the old elms and hear the Seniors sing the old songs.
Powelton was saying: "I don't see why you are so anxious to put him up for any office. To tell the truth, the old chump has been disgusting me lately."
"I'm not anxious," returned Todd, "but you see, he'll take with the poling element."
"But will he,now? He isn't such a gospel shark as we all thought at first."
"Of course, he's no saint, but they don't know anything about the Deacon, except his high stand and his serious-looking face, and the reputation he made with that C. C. business. Now, as we're running you and Ashley for president and vice-president, I think it would be foxy to put up somebody like the old Deacon for the secretary-treasurership." It was drawing near the time for the election of class officers for the next year, and Todd was somewhat of a politician.
"Maybe you're right, but I don't care to serve with him. He's so uncouth."
Powelton need not have worried about that; he did not have to serve with Young. Powelton was not elected; Young was the only nominee of the Invincibles that was.
The club had gained a reputation, not altogether deserved, for snobbishness. They were also considered, rightly perhaps, thesportiest crowd in the class; and either of these is dangerous, and the two together are fatal to a crowd's chances when it comes to class elections. Besides, the Invincibles had been running class affairs long enough, and the class thought it would be just as well to distribute authority and prominence.
The Invincibles had made the error of taking it for granted that they would continue to run the class, and bitter was their chagrin when they found how very mistaken they were. They did not know how to take it; for several days nobody said very much at the table; they only looked glum and sour—except Deacon Young.
"Oh, cork up that tuneless whistle," growled Minerva Powelton; "you make too much noise." They were familiar with him now.
Young laughed noisily, but kept on whistling and looked about the table, as he had seen the others do. Then lighting a cigar, he arose, said, "So long, fellows—see you later," and walked up the street with his hands deep in his pockets, his body inclinedforward in a kind of slouch, like a certain upper-classman he admired.
"Look at him," said Powelton from the window. "My, but he makes me tired when he tries to do the dead-game act."
He made them all more or less tired, though most of them liked him somewhat still, but in a very different way now. He was not a hero any more.
He tried to make himself as much like them as he could, but he had only succeeded in seeming unlike himself. They had not expected or wanted him to be like them.
They laughed at him, behind his back and to his face.
He tried harder.
They laughed more. He did not realize why.
There were a great many things that he did not realize. When he was nominated for the secretary-treasurership, as Powelton now felt like telling him, it was not because they wanted him, but because the club wanted the office. And neither did he realize that he was elected chiefly because of hisgood reputation, now undeserved, with the despised quiet fellows of the class.
All he realized was that he, William Young, who had started out a poor, ridiculed nonentity from the country, had conquered the famous bully of the Sophomore class, had won a place as right guard of the Freshman team, had been sought out by the Invincibles, had earned enough money to take him through the year, and, finally, had been elected the secretary and treasurer of the great class of Ninety-blank by popular vote. It was the very office formerly held by the admired Lucky Lee. It was ill that was needed to turn his head.
So he strutted about and looked patronizingly down on his old friends Barrows and Wilson, and blew smoke in their faces, telling himself how narrow-minded they were.
You see, he came to the Invincibles a hero dizzy with success. It is hard on anyone to be a hero, and success had proved too much for him. Instead of doing the Invincibles good, as he had intended, they had done him harm, as they surely never intended. It wassuch a pity. He could have made a very different thing of the whole club if he had only used his influence in the right way.
But this was another thing he did not realize; at least not until a little later. And then he did not have the influence.
Although Deacon Young was trying so hard to do the "dead-game act," the Freshman First Honor prize was still a matter of daily effort with him. He was really working exceedingly hard for it. He pretended that he was not working at all.
He was nearly always with the "crowd" in the evenings and was frequently seen wandering around as aimlessly as the rest of them during the day. That was the way he kept from being called a poler.