Part 9

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.