Chapter 3

"I'm on to you, Peter: You have a ton of rope and a barrel of paint somewhere about your den, and you're going out to-morrow to tie up the Sophs at the ball game. Now you fellows have had three rushes this year; when are you going to quit and give us a rest?"

Halleck held the position that delighted his soul,--center stage,--and he was a respecter of neither the Faculty nor his seniors.

"We're going to quit when we get even with you for pulling twenty-five lone Freshmen out of the Hall at night and making them rush against the whole Sophomore class; then's when we're going to quit. Observe?"

Halleck's shamefully fresh manner revived the drooping spirits of his men.

"See here, we'll call it off if you will," put in the Sophomore president.

"Yes, I guess you will," drawled Halleck. The mob howled. Smith's class was notoriously weaker at fighting than their own.

"We've rushed you three times," went on Cap; "you licked us the first time we fought; then you pulled us out in the mud the night after and did it again; but we got you the next week by strategy!"

"By a sneaking trick!"

"That's right!" chimed the Freshmen, "Pete's dead right!"

"Well, say," persisted Smith, "we're willing to quit as it is. The score stands two to one for you fellows, too."

"Two to nothing!" and again the infant class shouted approval while Lyman, the Senior, looked on amused.

"I really have a chap for you children," he said. "Just because rushing happens to be your game, you run it to death. How do you suppose the Faculty are going to look at this thing? If you want rushing choked off entirely next year, just keep on."

Airily ignoring Lyman's speech, Pete Halleck put his chin out at the Sophomore.

"Then you won't rush?"

"No," answered Cap, perfectly calm, "not even if you carry canes."

Halleck's face shone.

"Ai--i, boys, that's what we'll do! We'll get out there with canes to-morrow and we'll make 'em scrap!"

"Yes, you will! I believe it," sneered Smith. "You fellows are just fresh enough to queer yourselves that way."

"We'll queer _you_!" cried a valiant youngster "if you don't rush to-morrow we'll tie up your baseball team and cart 'em off to Redwood."

"Yes, sir, and we'll show you how a class president looks braided with bailing-rope,--we'll show you the pretty picture in a mirror, Mr. President,--even if we have to haul you out of the arms of twenty Roble dames."

Pete had taken his class-mates by storm and they piped acquiescence in thin Freshman voices. Smith flushed angrily.

Here Lyman interfered.

"All right, make joshes of yourselves if you want to," he said, not so good-natured as at first. "We have given you warning. Just open that door and you may go on with your little conspiracy."

"Come again when you can't stay so long," wittily yelled Pete down the hall. "I'll meet you on the field to-morrow."

"Oh, we'll be there," called back Lyman over his shoulder. "So will the Faculty," and with this covert hint the peacemakers turned the corner.

The sun shown brightly on the red-brown earth of the diamond when the Freshmen, the Sophomores and the Faculty met, according to agreement. The enterprising student-body management had chalked the Quad in conspicuous places:

RUSH of the YEAR, Sophomore-Freshman Game. Don't Miss It!

and the college responded. The co-eds were there, radiant in the snowiest of duck shirts, the gayest of shirt-waists. With them were "ladies' men," in variegated golf-stockings and gorgeous hat-bands. The Freshmen, gathered near first base, contrasted disreputably with this display; they wore old clothes, ragged hats, and they carried a miscellaneous collection of canes, borrowed from Juniors or stolen from Sophomores.

These stalwarts of the latest class were loaded with horns and noise-machines. Defiance exhaled from them. It was an impressive object-lesson on the evils of Freshman victories.

A few sensible Juniors went over and tried to quell their disturbance, but the infants were beyond any control of their class fathers; they had at their head the redoubtable Pete Halleck, with his perverted sense of the proprieties, and their uproar moderated not a bit. The Juniors returned to the bleachers, shaking their heads in disgust. Professor Grind, of the Committee on Student Affairs, was observed to write in his note-book. The Sophomores who saw this rejoiced that they were not in rushing clothes. Still the racket went on.

Jack Smith, in spotless tennis flannels, sat on the bleachers. Some girls from San Francisco, and one in particular as far as Cap was concerned, had come down with Tom Ashley's mother that morning, and he brought them over to the game. Pete Halleck picked him out at once and reminded the others of their promise.

Hannah Grant Daly, who did not know him to speak to, also picked him out. To her he looked more goodly than ever this afternoon, contrasted with the uncouthness of Halleck and others of her class. She watched him covertly, laughing and talking with the town girl beside him. He had laughed and talked very much like that to her, once, but he had forgotten it. That was natural; she had forgiven it long ago. Lillian Arnold, in the brightest of Easter hats, watched him, too.

The game was not exciting. The Freshmen were badly outplayed; the Sophomores galloped around the bases, and the babies' insolence grew with their opponents' score. As the last inning dragged its tedious length, the prospect of the Freshmen forcing a rush had become the important thing with the crowd. The fighting class limbered up for action. Now their third man struck out and the catcher's mask was off.

"Ready!" Pete Halleck's voice came out of the silence of the waiting crowd.

"All set!" and the class was up and off on a trot toward the Sophomore players, who were trying not to walk away any faster than was usual. One after another the baseball men were overtaken and went down in clouds of dust and hard language.

Yet the Sophomores would not rush. Frank Lyman had exhorted them simply, while the Freshmen were attacking their nine. One or two of the hot-heads hurried to the Hall for old clothes, but the majority stood looking on, angry but quiet.

"Now for Smith!" yelled Halleck. His men turned toward the co-ed section of the bleachers.

"Shall we get out of this?" Cap asked Ashley.

"Get out nothing! Stay right here with the girls. They wouldn't have the gall."

But the lust of fight was in the Freshman heart as the dust of fight was on the Freshman skin. They lined up, a ragged mass of impertinence, as near the women as they dared, and waited for the leader of the opposition. He chatted on, explaining the college rush to the girl with him, and gave no sign of moving.

"Shall we go in and take him?" asked an excited youngster.

"I'll give him a chance to come easy," said Halleck. He squared himself, adjusted his dusty hat, and went straight up the steps.

"Excuse me, Mr. Smith," said he, "you are forgetting an engagement you made with some of your friends yesterday."

This was the freshest thing in the history of the college. The Sophomore's fingers twitched.

"I think you can wait until later, Halleck," he said slowly. Then he turned to the girl.

From the time Halleck climbed the bleachers and went toward Smith and his guests, the spectators were stiff with astonishment; nobody did anything. They saw Halleck look for one moment into Smith's angry blue eyes, go down the steps, and bring back two big fellows. Before the Sophomore could move away from the girls, the three men had dragged him down the bleachers; one heave of Halleck's broad back and Smith was under them, with his wind gone, and a Freshman was getting a rope ready.

Then just as Ashley tore down the steps in a rage, a slip of a girl darted past him and put her hands on Halleck's shoulders; a small, sandy-haired girl with blazing eyes.

"Untie him, you great brutes!"

The man with the rope stared at her irresolutely, furtively slipping the knot tighter. By this time, Halleck was on his feet again and had recovered from his surprise.

"Excuse me," he began.

The girl looked him in the eye.

"Get that rope off!"

She was just a little thing, but her gaze never wavered. The direct gaze is something that wild beasts and bullies, Freshmen or otherwise, cannot bear. Pete Halleck looked around for moral support, but his men were shame-faced and the bleachers were silent. He bent down and slipped the rope off Smith's feet.

With the rout of their leader the whole fighting class, weighing some ten tons in battle trim, vanished like chaff before the spirit of one Freshie co-ed. By twos and threes they slouched away, trying to look unconcerned.

She turned to the man she had rescued.

"Are you much hurt, Mr. Smith?" she asked, her voice sweet with sympathy.

The Sophomore president stood there, rumpled, winded, flaming with embarrassment. Away up on the bleachers a girl in an Easter hat tittered and a general laugh followed. That laugh brought Smith to himself, but, before he could turn to thank her, Hannah, with a swift, frightened glance at the people, had fled to the Quadrangle. With swelling bosom and eyes stinging with restrained tears she leaned her face against a cool pillar and watched the swallows circle mistily about the red tiling.

People, coming from the ball-ground, passed her, unnoticed in the shadow. A man's voice, ringing with merriment, cried:

"Poor old Captain! I never saw him have such a chap. It's pretty hard on a man to have a girl do the Pocahontas act like that!"

A peal of Roble laughter answered.

"Pocahontas! O--oh, that's a cute name for her!"

HIS UNCLE'S WILL.

His Uncle's Will.

"It's a wise child that resembles its richest relative."

MODERN PROVERB.

Walter Olcott Haviland came to Stanford in September at the age of eighteen, and was rushed by the fraternities.

There is nothing remarkable about this, unless considered from Haviland's point of view. With his High School pin illuminating the vest on which a mystic Greek symbol was ere long to shine, he passed down the line of inquisitive Sophomores in Encina lobby, and into the Den of the Bear, presented his receipt for the room he had prudently engaged months ahead, and was duly bestowed within those plain white walls between which the Freshman begins a charmed existence of four years or four months, as the Committee may determine.

It is recorded that once before Commencement two Seniors came from fraternity houses at opposite ends of the campus and slept together the last night, as they had slept their first, in their Freshman room at the Hall. They had been rivals and in warring factions, but they lay down together in that place of beginnings, before a new heaven opened for them over a new earth. This is proof positive that you never forget your first room in the Hall. You may give it up for an attic in a chapter-house, you may go to live with young Freshleigh, with whom you are already chums, and whose apartment has the morning sun; but the first room is a foundation stone in your house of memories. Your trunk is brought in by the Student Transfer man (first lesson in self-help) and put down near the dreary-looking beds with their mattresses doubled on the foot-rail. Then, sitting down by the bare, shining table where, later on, theses are to be written and punches brewed, you stake out claims for the decorative material in your trunk. Certainly decorations are needed. The wardrobe stands forbiddingly against the wall. You will soon learn how to move it forward, reverse it, and adorn the back. The chilling whiteness of the walls is relieved only by one square, uncompromising mirror. An "Addersonian" tenderness has placed a yellow-flowered rug beside each bed. Otherwise, the place is barren.

If there is time before dinner, you swallow your loneliness and get out the home photographs and stand them up here and there, and the room is changed. These walls may become a scrap-book of four years' association with Alma Mater; the wardrobe may be hidden with kodaks of the gang and its exploits; but to-day, before you have even met the gang, you come into your own.

The newly-arrived Haviland, in the throes of this emotion, looks about him. He has put upon the ugly commode sundry pictures of his graduating class at the High School, each one dressed in his best, each flanked by floral offerings, each holding the impressive diploma. Later, these portraits will be less prominent in this college room.

He looks at them with a feeling of pity. It must be hard not to come to college. He is a lucky boy. Sliding unobtrusively into the hall-way, he strikes up an acquaintance with some other social Freshman, and together they watch the upper class-men coming in. Man after man drifts into the arms of waiting friends. How well they all know one another! Gradually he learns who and what these men are, the Seniors who manage the Hall or edit the College papers, the 'Varsity idols, the men who make College life. Important beings they seem to the Freshman, men who have reached heights above his modest possibilities, heroes who are great in the land. After dinner he mingles in the stag dances on the second floor hall-way; finding that a fellow class-man has neglected the graceful art, he takes him up on the third floor and teaches him the step. He is fitting in, you see. Then he hears the crowd surging into the lobby and picks up the chorus of "We'll rush the ball along," and before this first day is over he catches the contagion of that intangible, pervasive, never wholly fading thing, College spirit.

Jimmy Mason, Sophomore, hustling Student-Body assessments, drops in on him, and stops to chat awhile. Haviland learns that our team this year has lost such and such valuable men; that there are opportunities for a chap with football in him. The Freshman thinks of the day when the crowd at home cheered him as his school beat the Academy. He hands Mason the assessment money, being beautifully green yet. Like oases are these Freshmen to the Student-Body collector. Very likely the Sophomore rewards him by coming to his door, after the lights are out, at the head of a motley mob. They put him on the table, shivering in his nightie, and make derogatory remarks about his shape and his personal charms; then, having solemnly baptised him "Callipers," or whatever metaphorical name his physical architecture may suggest, they make him cavort for their delectation. If he shows modesty and courage in his unhappy obedience, he is greeted as a nice little boy and is introduced to his tormentors, who explain that the ritual was offered from the kindest motives. Doubtless it is this knowledge that makes him enjoy so keenly the sacrifice of fellow class-men, at which he is permitted to be present the next evening.

When he is spoken to mysteriously one night by "Pellams" Chase, a Junior from the Row, and told to put on his oldest clothes and to get his trunk-rope ("to rope up a Sophomore's trunk this time," hints the Junior), for the first time he sees his class as a whole, and stands shoulder to shoulder with them in the first College rush. The subsequent pullings and haulings, the poundings and jammings of this experience are happily compensated for if Chase takes him when all is over, binds up his bruises and tells him about fights of other days when there were giants upon the campus. After this, the College is never the immense, far-away thing it has seemed. He has seen his own class-men together, he has measured his strength with the dread Sophs, he is a University man.

Long before this the fraternities have spotted him.

* * * * *

"What are you going to do next hour?"

Haviland had just come out from his nine-thirty recitation and found "Cap" Smith waiting for him. Smith was a Beta Rho, and he had waited there in the same way for the same Freshman more than once in the month since the opening. It was Pellams who had discovered the boy, one night in Mason's room, where the Junior loafed half his time. Pellams had a big heart surely, for he had at once interested himself in Haviland, asking him over to dinner to meet the fellows. The Freshman knew it was the Juniors' duty to look after the infant class. This particular Junior was a College favorite,--Walt had seen that--and the boy from far-away New England went across the campus to the Row feeling that he was getting into good hands. The Rho house seemed about right. Dinner was a boisterous affair where the men took hands around the table and sang a rollicking accompaniment to Pellams' coon songs, strange table-manners that did not appear much to disturb Perkins' mother, who poured coffee at the end. Afterward they all sat out on the porch steps in the summer evening with their pipes, watching three of the men play catch. One of the fellows danced a shuffle while the rest stood around and clapped time and shouted, "Come on you _Nigger_!" They were very happy; it was a bully way to live; the homelike look of things appealed to the Freshman. Two of the fellows walked back to the Hall with him, and when they said good-night they shook his hand strongly and hoped they would see more of him.

This was the beginning. The college had become aware of his presence now. So far he had taken just nine meals that he had paid for, and had been away from the Hall one night out of four.

At the reception to the Freshmen he had been introduced to the same Faculty people six times over by members of as many fraternities, each presenting him as an individual entirely under their auspices and for whom they alone were responsible. Higgins, the sky-scraping Beta Phi, whom he had met only that evening, took him arm in arm up to the President's wife, and said:

"I want to introduce Mr. Haviland, a particular friend of mine. You will be good to him for my sake, won't you?" And the lady with a twinkle in her brown eyes, having recently promised to do the same for Jack Smith's sake, pledged her favors anew to the bewildered Walt.

Haviland did not quite understand this attitude of open arms. His first days in the Hall had not prepared him for it. He did not know that because he was well-bred, well-dressed and athletically promising, he was generally voted the prize Freshman of the year.

Then came the bids. There were only a few of the crowds that did not spike him; three who were manifestly not of his style and two who never presumed to enter the game until the others had made their winnings. All sorts of methods had been used. The first bid came early; he was given twenty-four hours to answer it, as "the Gamma Chi Tau never wait for a man." The Freshman, however, getting riper in the sun of experience, interpreted this to mean fear of competition, and so "declined with assurances of continued friendship." There was a crowd who slapped him on the back and called him "old man." Once he had been fresh enough to tell them a story, and they had laughed so uproariously over it that he was dreadfully embarrassed. The hospitality of another set seemed to consist of a sly but systematic attempt to get him drunk for some mysterious purpose of their own. He had put some of them to bed and felt superior, which was fatal to their chances.

He had been to many varieties of dinner-tables. Some of them were homelike; the talk at others had robbed him of appetite.

"What do you think of our crowd?" asked Roach, keenly, after a particularly disagreeable meal at which there had been much coarseness and a wreck of a tablecloth.

"They seem to me to be about the most congenial fellows I ever met," answered the disgusted but tactful Haviland, and Roach, going back to his house, announced authoritatively that the boy was theirs if they wanted him.

By this time he had learned the art of dodging invitations and remaining non-committal when asked, "Well, Walt, are you going to do the right thing?" Many a set, piled upon the beds in a fraternity room, sat up late talking him over and wondering how he was "coming on."

The Beta Phis, for instance, were in painful doubt. They were conscious of a comparatively poor stack-up, but their rushing energy was admirable, and once the persecuted Haviland had been obliged to ask a Beta Rho to hide him from them. Pellams and Smith were merry at dinner that night.

In his heart, Walt had about decided on Beta Rho. This crowd treated him with well-bred cordiality but with far less effusiveness than the others. He was pleased when they had let him mix with them without permitting him to forget the gulf between. This had put him off his guard so that he had grown accustomed to them. Observing him expertly from the corners of their eyes, they affected not to notice the way he blushed after having joined unconsciously in a Beta Rho song. One day he dropped over uninvited, and they understood. But in the first week of their acquaintance they had told him to hold off and be slow about pledging himself, and nothing more had been said so far.

On the night of the first rush, ending in complete victory for the Freshmen, Haviland had been so unfortunate as to clinch with Cap Smith, and he was largely responsible for the ignominious tying up of that husky Sophomore. He would much rather have been carted off himself, if it hadn't been for the class. He saw his Beta Rho chances vanishing. Pellams evidently did not know what had happened, he was so good to him after it, rubbing his bruises and dressing his scraped cheek. The next day Cap Smith came over and bid him to the fraternity. As a matter of principle, Haviland asked for a week to decide.

This indulgence was up to-day and now Cap was waiting for him after the second-hour class. Walt knew what answer he should give. He felt very contented.

"I got your mail for you," said Smith, handing him an envelope. "I've a letter of my own to read, so tackle yours while we walk along."

They went up toward the stock-farm, and the boy opened his mother's letter and read eagerly the home news and the affectionate questions. She enclosed, she said, the check which his uncle, who was putting him through College, had sent for October. Following this were a few words that made him stare hard at the road before him, as he and Smith strolled on. "Your uncle writes," said the letter, "that when he was at Amherst he was a fraternity man, and thinks you ought to be one, and he would like to have you join the society to which he belonged, the Beta Phi. I am sure, Wo dear, you will follow his wishes in a matter like this. It is not much to do in return."

Poor Walt! The Beta Rhos had never seemed such smooth fellows as at this moment when he felt himself suddenly pledged to the Beta Phis. In his mind's eye the Phis passed before him, one by one, particularly a certain long, unprepossessing member who had stayed till after twelve one night and bored him with a dreary recital of the prominence of his house in College politics, of the stump speeches that a former brother, now a historical personage, had made in Mayfield for prohibition, to say nothing of the essay prizes in philology that another ancient Phi had won in the dim past, when the chapter must have been more prominent than at present. In comparison with this record, the Rhos were numbskulls, dwelling in an amplified smoking-room, Walt must admit; their control of the Eleven and of the Glee Club was nothing. And now his future was black with philology prizes, with meals at which stew was a staple, and where only visitors had clean napkins.

The two fellows had by this time reached the trotting stables. They looked in at the beautiful, sleek racers, carefully blanketed and booted, and stroked an inquisitive nose or two, reached out over the white doors. Then they went on up the stock-farm yard and along the road to the bridge over San Francisquito. Here Smith stopped; leaning on the rail, he looked down at his blonde image in the shallow water below.