Part 4

The crafty Stoughton, however, had a scheme. He had been pondering over the case for some time, and Dick rarely pondered for nothing. He was known to his intimates as Machiavelli, called Mac the Dago for short. This particular plan was indeed worthy of his great namesake. He imparted it to Jack Randolph, who had the heaviest personal score against Bullam, and, therefore, the best title to share in his humiliation. They fixed the following night as Bullam's Ides and announced it to all their friends. They posted it in all the clubs, and in every way spread the glad tidings that on the morrow Bullam should be utterly cast down. They fixed the hour at about ten o'clock in the evening, and exhorted the people to gather themselves together in a great concourse to see their enemy made a cause of laughter unto them. The promise of the avenging prophets was to conduct a triumph along the whole length of Harvard Street and to lead in their train the haughty Bullam, humbled and a captive; he should even act as their body-guard if they so chose, and prevent all interference by his brothers of the force. How this millennial spectacle was to be brought about, they kept carefully secret.

There is, perhaps, in every man a certain element of moral obliquity, which, as he is put through any civilizing process, is squeezed out of him from time to time in varying forms and quantities. It comes to the surface, makes itself acutely felt and apparent for a short time, and then drops off,--just as a physical poison would act in his veins. At any rate, this is the only theory that can explain the highly reprehensible but firmly established custom among Harvard Freshmen of "ragging" signs. "Ragging," uninitiated reader, simply means stealing. What amusement, profit, or glory the Freshman finds in it has never been ascertained. He cannot tell exactly himself, and, as soon as he ceases to be a Freshman, wonders why he ever indulged in the habit. Perhaps the charm lies in the chance of getting into a scrape; but in most instances a sign can be taken with perfect safety. Now I cannot possibly think why I--but that is another story, as Mr. Kipling says.

I am going to digress, however, for one story in this connection. Ned Burleigh used to tell it on his room-mate, Steve Hudson. Steve always denied it vehemently, and declared that Burleigh did not even deserve the credit of a fabricator; that the story had been in college for years, and he had heard it told by a '42 man. Ned held that made no difference; that some one had to carry it for our four years and Steve was the best man for the position. According to him, Hudson, in walking back from Boston on a dark night in Freshman year, spied a tempting sign hanging on a door-post. He secured it by some difficult climbing, and tucking it under his overcoat, went on his way. On arriving in his room he announced that he had a prize, and, unbuttoning his coat, he displayed to Burleigh's delighted gaze, his only evening suit and the sign "Fresh Paint."

This practice of stealing signs had made Bullam's meat of many a Freshman. In fact, the diligent Sergeant depended upon it for most of his [Greek: kudos] so Dick Stoughton had determined to play upon his keenness in this respect, and use a sign as the bait with which to hook his fish. On the appointed evening he and Randolph went to Cambridgeport, and bought a barber's pole. They were careful to get a receipted bill from the barber with an accurate description of the pole. The latter was marked with the barber's name in gilt letters, and was small enough to be nearly, but not quite, covered with an overcoat. Thus provided, they started back for Cambridge proper (the Port being usually known as Cambridge improper) along Main Street, keeping as much as possible in the shadows. At the end of half a dozen blocks, they came on a policeman, and promptly crossed the street in a most alluring manner. The vigilant officer, noticing the suspicious shape of Randolph's overcoat held under his arm, gave chase. The end of the pole stuck out from the coat, and it was useless for the students to protest that they had nothing that did not belong to them. They assured their captor that the pole was theirs, that they had paid for it and could prove the fact; but he insisted upon taking them before the captain of the precinct.

The captain had had a hard day, and was preparing to go to bed when they were brought before him. He was tired and cross, and his humor was not improved by this new arrival. When Stoughton showed the receipt, however, he at once discharged the prisoners with much pleasure, and reprimanded the overcareful officer.

The two then went on to the next guardian of Main Street, and he bit equally well. They warned him of the result, and gave him their word of honor that the pole was not stolen. He hesitated, and for a moment they feared that he was going to be decent enough to believe them. But he was a new and zealous recruit on the force and the bait was too inviting; so he decided not to trust them. He was as polite as possible about it and when he even apologized for not taking their word, they came near melting and showing the receipt. But the fall of Bullam was not to be averted, simply because gentler tyrants might be entrained. So back they went to headquarters.

The captain came down in a red dressing-gown, the skirt of which flapped idly in the breeze that came through an open window in the office. His bare feet were shoved into a pair of carpet slippers, each foot in the wrong slipper. With one hand he held a candle that wiggled in the candle-stick and dropped wax on his wrist, and with the other hand tried to keep the dressing-gown about his person. His frame of mind faithfully carried out the spirit of the picture. To any guilty prisoner he would have been indeed a terrifying spectacle; but he could do nothing to the innocent and insulted gentlemen who had been haled before him. He therefore relieved himself on their captor. The poor man got such a dressing down, that when they left the office, Randolph presented him with full forgiveness, a dollar bill, and the advice to learn as soon as possible to tell a Senior from a Freshman.

The next policeman they met was old George Smith. He held them up with a look of surprise, and a remark that he thought they had been in college too long to be "ragging" barber's poles. When they explained to him, however, he of course believed them, and grinned as he perceived something in the wind.

"It is lucky that was George," said Stoughton, as they went on. "If we had struck a strange cop, who thought we were liars, we should have brought down the wrong bird. That police captain is just exactly primed and loaded to the muzzle, and all ready to go off. Now for Bullam!"

They had now reached Quincy Square, and saw the fated form of Bullam loom in the offing. They made for him boldly; there was no need of finessing in his case. The moment his hawk eye caught sight of the ill-concealed pole, he bore down on them with a grim joy.

"What have you got under that coat?" he demanded in his usual suave tone.

"None of your business," responded Jack Randolph, with an inward chuckle.

"It isn't, eh! Do you think I can't see that pole a-sticking out there? Do you think you can steal signs under my very nose? You come along with me now, and we'll see whether it's none of my business."

"If your insulting remarks refer to this barber-pole," replied Randolph, producing the pole with ostentatious confidence, "allow me to tell you that it belongs to us, and we have a perfect right to carry it wherever we please. Although, as I said before, it is none of your business, I will condescend to let you know that I bought it lately, and have a receipt for it in my pocket."

"You can't give me no such bluff as that," sneered Bullam. "You can tell that to the captain of the precinct. I'll give you a chance to show your receipt."

"Look here, my man," (nothing makes a gentleman of Bullam's class more angry than to call him "my man") answered Stoughton, "you don't deserve it after the language you have used to us, but, nevertheless, I give you fair warning not to do anything of the kind. If you take us to the captain, you will get into trouble."

Bullam was beside himself. The more they said to him the more furious he became, and finally threatened to use his club "if they gave him any more guff." So, in high delight, the two injured youths took their way a third time towards the house of the captain.

The policeman who had last had them in charge turned quickly away as they passed, and shoved his handkerchief into his mouth. It was a grateful balm to the new man to see a veteran going into the same trap that had just lacerated him. Moreover, Bullam was quite as unpopular in the force as with the students.

All was dark in the house where lay the uneasy head that wore the crown of the precinct. Bullam rang the bell, with a ferocious glare at his prisoners, as though tolling their death knell. A minute afterwards a window opened above, and a head was thrust forth.

"Who is there?" bellowed a voice, now familiar to our much-arrested pair.

"Sergeant Bullam, sir, with an arrest."

Dick and Jack took care to stand under a gas-lamp.

"Have you got two men there with a barber's pole?" asked the voice, rising from a roar to a shriek.

"Yes, sir," chuckled Bullam, gleefully, mistaking the direction of his superior's wrath. "I caught----"

"Didn't they tell you that it was their property, bought and paid for?"

"Yes, they had some cock-and-bull----"

"Stop!" thundered the captain, "you're too ---- ready to think every gentleman you meet is a liar. Don't you be so ---- ---- hot after your promotion. If you'll give more attention to your important duties, and less to making capital out of the students, you'll get ahead faster. Now you go all the way back with these gentlemen, and see that they are not troubled any more. If they are brought here again I'll know who to blame for it. I'll have you up for a breach of special duty, and make it hot for you. What's more, you treat them civilly. I'll have no bullies on my squad. If this man gives you boys any lip, come around and see me about it in the morning. Now get out of here, and you, Bullam, mind what I tell you, and be ---- ---- careful."

All the blanks in the foregoing address were filled in with deep color, and the window went down with a slam that heavily sank in the sickened soul of the astonished Bullam.

"Come along, sergeant," cried Randolph, cheerfully, shouldering the barber-pole. He and Dick led the way back through Quincy Square, whistling the "Rogue's March" and the "Pere de la Victoire." The overwhelmed Bullam fell in behind. As they turned down Harvard Street, he walked slowly and tried to drop back to a distance which would disguise his connection with the parade; but his conquerors allowed no such break in the procession. They slowed down, too, and kept about ten feet in front of him.

On the first corner of Harvard Street were stationed three or four small boys (the occasionally useful Cambridge muckers) employed as vedettes. Upon the approach of the triumph, they dashed off to the different clubs and gathering-places where the long oppressed people were eagerly awaiting the arrival of Bullam in chains. These all flocked to Harvard Street, Hudson bringing his cornet, Dixey a pair of cymbals, and Ned Burleigh flourishing the drum-major's baton, with which he had done mighty service in the last torch-light procession. It was going to be the most glorious triumph ever seen in the classic shades since Washington rode through them on his white charger.

But, alas! what a trivial thing may upset the grandest strategy; what a petty boor may defeat Ulysses! Yet it was not such a petty boor who caused the ruin in this case; it was the Cambridge mucker, and he should never have been overlooked by a man of Machiavelli Stoughton's experience. Those who know the Cantabrigian guerilla respect his power, though they abhor his ways. An influential member of this free lancehood, having demanded a quarter for the vedette service before mentioned, and being refused employment, nursed a vindictive spirit. He gathered a band on Harvard Street, near to the advanced scouts, and waited to see what was going to happen. As soon as Stoughton and Randolph came up with the attendant Bullam, this unforeseen enemy raised a joyful shout and marshalled his comrades behind the trio. As they proceeded along the street, he yelled to every mucker they passed, "Hey, ragsy, come on! Here's two o' de Ha'vards gettin' run in!"

Muckers gathered from every side like jackals, and Bullam, realizing the sudden turn in the aspect of affairs, no longer lagged behind, but forged up alongside of his would-be tamers, and assumed his old fierce and haughty air. He could maintain his dignity before the public anyway.

This was the way Dick Stoughton's great triumph looked when it reached a point opposite the Yard. The expectant crowd of undergraduates looked for a moment in surprise and grief, then, notwithstanding their disappointment at Bullam's escape, a great roar of laughter went up, as they concluded that the two daring plotters had egregiously failed in their attempt and were on their way to a dungeon.

"Let's bail them out," cried two or three. "Bail nothing, you idiots," shouted the chagrined Stoughton, "we are not arrested; this man is our body-guard. Come on, and we will take the procession around the Square and up Garden Street."

This had been Dick's original intention as to the line of march; but just at this moment the Dean of Harvard College came around the corner of Holyoke Street and stopped short. In the direction of Harvard Square lay the jail, and Stoughton at once decided that a triumph of such uncertain appearance had better be brought to a close right where they were. He and Randolph halted, therefore, and, waving aloft the barber's pole, gave Bullam their gracious permission to depart. As a little extra effect they ordered him to disperse the rabble, to which mandate he payed no attention. Then, with as much dignity as possible, they retreated into Foster's. It was the best effort they could make to retrieve the day, a weak ending to so magnificent a scheme.

They did not hear the last of their "grand pageant" for a long time; but their own recollection of it will always be softened by the memory of those sweet moments beneath the captain's window.

THE DOG BLATHERS.

Besides the "officers of instruction and government," and the instructed and governed, there are many classes and individuals that make up the university population of Cambridge--unofficial members, whose names do not appear in the catalogue. There are the camp followers, the goodies, the janitors, the Poco, John the Orangeman, Riley, the O'Haras who "understand th' busniz," and all the other dignitaries, as firmly established and well recognized as the Faculty. Probably the most numerous of the unofficial classes is the great four-legged one. There are undergraduate dogs, and law-school dogs, and post-graduate dogs, and I believe there were one or two Divinity dogs. During our time there were several very distinguished dogs in the Faculty, notably one huge bull-dog. Among the undergraduates, the ugliest and most perfect in form and feature, the most polished and attractive in manner, the most genial and popular, in every way the leader _par excellence_, was Rattleton's round head bull-terrier Blathers.

Blathers was named after the great man who bred him. That celebrated fancier was renowned throughout Cambridge for two things, his dogs and his profanity. He could outswear Sawin's expressman, Hitchell the black scout, and the janitor of Little's Block, and any one who could excel those three was indeed an artist. I do not believe, however, that the recording angel entered all of Blather's items in the debit column:--in the first place, he would not have had time, in the second place, most of Blather's oaths were not delivered in anger, in the sense of Raca, but flowed out innocently and unconsciously, merely as aids to conversation. One morning this worthy came into Rattleton's room, bearing in his hand a little brindled object about five inches long. It looked like a stub-tailed rat, whose nose had been smashed with a lump of coal.

"Good mornin', Mr. Rattleton; beg your pardon for intrudin', sir, but I've got sumpthin' here I want for to show yer. I've got a magnificent animal."

"Oh, get out, Blathers; I don't want a dog; had to give away the last one."

The following speech was bristling with profanity, but I have omitted even the indication blanks, except in one passage where they were too characteristic to be left out.

"I don't want yer to buy him, sir. I just want to show him to yer. He's a beauty. I know yer knows the points of a dog, sir, and its just a pleasure I'm givin' yer to look at him. Just take him in your hand, sir. Now, I sold Mrs. G. an own half brother of that feller. You know Mrs. G., surely, down here to the Theolog. school?" (Mrs. G. was a most charming and gentle lady, the wife of a celebrated clergyman.) "Well, I stopped at her house the other day to see how she liked the pup. She says to me, 'By ----, Blathers,' says she, 'that's the ---- ---- finest dog ever I see; d---- me, if it ain't,' says she. Yes, sir, that's just what she thought about him. You go ask her and see if it ain't. And she wouldn't say nothin' she didn't mean, just to tickle me, neither. Mrs. G. is a real lady, and knows the points of a dog, she does. She was ---- ---- kind to my wife when she was sick last time. Oh, my wife's been orful sick, Mr. Rattleton. I had to pay for a lot of doctor's consults and other stuff; that's just the only reason, sir, I want to sell this beautiful pup. I 'd never part with him in this world, if I could help it."

Blathers never would have parted from any of his dogs had it not been for his frequent family afflictions. These afflictions were always very expensive and varied, from the funeral of his mother to the birth of twins. He buried four mothers in one year; that was his best work, though six children born during the following term pushed hard on the record.

"If I could only make up my mind to let yer have that dog, Mr. Rattleton," he went on, "it would work both ways. Maybe I ought to do it. It would be a favor and a kind thing in me to sell yer that pup at any price, and you'd be doin' a charity to a poor man in helpin' me along. It would be a good action all around, see? Oh, I need the money orful bad."

Rattleton during this speech had been playing with the puppy, and he was struck both by the brightness of the little fellow and the logic of his owner. He knew that Blathers really did have rather hard times with his family. In any case Lazy Jack never took the trouble to sift a tale of woe and apply the most enlightened and efficient remedy. He had no excuse for not doing so; he took the Social Ethics Course in Philosophy because it was easy, and of course he knew how wrong it is to give to a beggar; nevertheless, he rarely failed to do so if he had a coin in his pocket, because it was so much easier than making enquiries and giving advice. Moreover Jack was so lacking in principles, that if he thought the beggar looked cold and in want of a hot whiskey, he was, if anything, more apt to yield the ill-destined alms. In this instance the insidious Blathers had struck him in two vulnerable spots, his very weak nature, and his love of dogs. He also wanted to get rid of Blathers with his endless stream of lurid and decidedly rum-flavored eloquence, and the easiest way to do so was to buy the puppy.

It was in his master's Sophomore year that Blathers, the pup, began his career. He waxed fast in beauty and knowledge. His nose grew in and his teeth grew out, his ears assumed the correct angle and his legs the proper curve. His tail in babyhood had been scientifically bitten off by the gentleman after whom he was named, and was, therefore, of exactly the right length. He went through the distemper and gave it to every dog in his club. His spirit did not belie his points; before the end of his junior year he had tackled almost every dog in Cambridge and generally came out on top. He was a dog of marvellous tact, also; he learned not to growl at the proctor on his staircase. Rattleton spent much time on Blather's education--so did Rattleton's friends. The latter, among other accomplishments, succeeded after great effort in teaching him to drink beer; but Blathers never went beyond the bounds of propriety, as did frequently that disreputable Irish terrier of Dixey's.

Blather's most prominent virtue of all was devotion to his master, and his affection was fully returned. Those two were rarely apart, except in the mornings, before Rattleton was up. Blathers always got out with the nine o'clock lecture men and chapel goers, and would visit around at the various club-tables where he had friends, generally collecting five or six breakfasts before his master arose. At about eleven o'clock he would be seen, sitting with his arms akimbo, in front of the Holly Tree; then Jack was sure to be inside, getting the marvellous dropped eggs from the sad-eyed John. If ever Blathers frequented the steps of Massachusetts, Sever, or other lecture hall, all men would know that Jack Rattleton was again on probation. If they saw the dog on the grim stone Stair of Sighs in the south entrance of University, they would make sympathetic inquiries when next they met the master.

When the round black and brown head stuck out of the window of Riley's cab, it was certain that Rattleton was bound over the bridge. They even went once or twice to the theatre together, Blathers concealed under Jack's overcoat. Though pugnacious by nature, it was not because Blathers loved other dogs less, but fighting more. He loved a row for its own sweet self, had few enemies and several warm friends. He was particularly devoted to Hudson's Topsy, and engaged in many a combat on her account, and for her edification. There were only two dogs for whom he had any real aversion--Mike Dixey, of his own class, and Baynor's white bull-dog, of the class below him.