Owen Johnson

“ Story joining them, suddenly the Jean Story of old returned with the same cordiality and the same enthusiasm. She asked a hundred questions, leading him on until he was launched into an account of his summer experiences, the little bits of real life that had brought home to him the seriousness of the world that waited outside.
He spoke not as the Stover of sophomore year, filled with the enthusiasm of discovery, but with a maturer mind, which had begun to reflect and to reason upon what had come into his knowledge. ”

“ Stover, his back to the wall, heard him with the clarity that sometimes comes. His head seemed to be among whirling mists, but every word came to him as though it alone were the only sound in a sleeping world. He wanted to answer, he rebelled at the logic, he knew it could be answered, but the words would not come.
"You're going to the devil, that's it in good English words," said Le Baron, not without kindness. "You ought to be the biggest thing in your class, and you're headed for the biggest failure. ”

“ We represent only a social idea, a good time, good friends, good figure-heads on the different machines of the college. But we miss the big chance—to go out, to mingle with every one, to educate ourselves by knowing opposite lives, fellows who see things as we never have seen them, who are going back to a life a thousand miles away from what we will lead." He expressed himself badly, and, realizing it, said impatiently: "Here, what I mean is this. It's not my idea, it's Brockhurst's, it's Tom Regan's. ”

“ All you've got left is your nerve and the chance to show that you can die game. That's all you're going to do; but, by heaven, you're going to do that! You're going to die game, Yale! Every mother's son of you! And when the game's over we're going to be prouder of your second half than the whole blooming Princeton bunch over their first. There's your chance. Make us rise up and yell for you. Will you, Yale?"
He passed from man to man, advising, exhorting, or storming, until he came to Stover.
"Dink," he said, putting out his hand and changing his tone suddenly, "I haven't a word to say to you. ”

“ The pipe between Stover's lips had gone out, but he did not heed it. A new life—life itself—was suddenly revealing itself to him; not the guarded existences of his own kind, but the earnest romance of the submerged nine-tenths. As Swazey stopped, he said impulsively, directly:
"By George, Swazey, I envy you!"
"Well, it's taught me to size men up pretty sharply," said Swazey, continuing. "I've seen them in the raw, I've seen them in all sorts of tests. I've sort of got a pretty guess what they'll do or not do. Then, of course, I've had a knack of making money out of what I touch—it's a gift." ”

“ Mrs. Story, sunk in the old high-backed arm-chair near the fire, followed him, too, aware also of the change in the boy, wondering what lay in the mind of her daughter, camped at her knee on the hearth rug, listening so intently and yet clinging to her as though for instinctive protection.
Stover spoke only of outward things; the thoughts that lay beneath, that would have come out so eagerly before the girl, did not appear in the presence of another. ”

“ To win he would have to change.
"It's been good of you to tell me all this," he said, giving his hand to Le Baron, and the words sounded hollow.
"Think over what I've said to you."
"I will."
"A man is known by his friends; remember that, Stover, if you don't anything else!"
"It's awfully good of you."
"I like you, Dink," said Le Baron, shaking hands warmly; "now you know the game, go in and win."
"It's awfully good of you," said Stover aimlessly. He stood watching Le Baron's strong, aristocratic figure go swinging across the dim campus in a straight, undeviating, well-calculated path. ”

“ The biggest thing we can do is to reflect the nation, to be the inspiration of the democracy of the country, to be alive to the fight among the people for real political independence. We ought to get a great vision when we come up here, as young men, of the bigness of our country, of the privilege of fighting out its political freedom, of what American manhood means in the towns of Georgia and Texas, in the little manufacturing cities of New England, in the great West, and in the small homes of the big cities. ”

“ Tompkins was in a blaze of fury.
"Hold up! What do you think this is? I didn't ask you to hug your grandmother; I told you to tackle that dummy! Hit it hard—break it in two! If you can't tackle, we don't want you around. Tackle to throw your man back! Tackle as if the whole game depended on it. Come on, now. Next man. Jump at it! Rotten! Rotten! Oh, squeeze it. Don't try to butt it over—you're not a goat! Half the game's the tackling! Next man. Oh, girls—girls! What is this bunch, anyhow—a young ladies' seminary? Here! Stop—stop! You're up at Yale now. I'll show you how we tackle!" ”

“ At the practise, the season's marked division among the coaches was forgotten, and the field was alive with frantic assistants. The scrimmage between the varsity and the scrub took on a savageness that was sometimes difficult to control. The team, facing the impossible, with eagerness to respond, had clearly overworked itself. Stover himself weighed a bare one hundred and forty, an unspeakable depravity which he carefully concealed. ”

“ Combat transformed his features, sending all the color from his face, narrowing the eyes, and drawing tense the lips. Combat was with him always an overmastering rage in the leash of a cold, nervous, pulsating logic, which by the very force of its passion gave to his expression an almost dispassionate cruelty—a look not easy to meet, that somehow, on the instant, impressed itself on the crowd with the terrific seriousness of the will behind. ”

“ All education can do is to instil the love of knowledge. You get that, you catch the fire of it—you educate yourself. All education does to-day is to develop the memory at the expense of the imagination. It says: 'Here are so many pounds of Greek, Latin, mathematics, history, literature. In four years our problem is to pass them through the heads of these hundreds of young barbarians so that they will come out with a lip knowledge.'"
"But come, we do learn something," said Hungerford.
"No, you don't, Joe," said Brockhurst. ”

“ Stover, dropping a little behind, confident in his measure of the man, caught him with his shoulder on the start, throwing him off balance for a precious moment, and then followed him down the field, worrying him like a sheep-dog pursuing a rebellious member of his flock, and caught him at the last with a quick lunge at the knees that sent him sprawling out of the play. ”

“ You don't know the big men in music; you don't know the pioneers and the leaders in any art; you don't know the great literatures of the world, and what they represent; you don't know how other races are working out their social destinies; you've never even stopped to examine yourselves, to analyze your own society, to see the difference between a civilization founded on the unit of the individual, and a civilization, like the Latin, on the indestructible advance of the family. ”

“ With the impetuousness of his nature, he outstripped his associates, plunging deeper and deeper, obstinately resolved, into the black gulf of his cynicism. In a week his excesses became college gossip, and, unknown to Stover, the subject of many long conferences among his friends.
One Friday night, as, straying aimlessly from room to room, he set out for Mory's in quest of Tom Kelly and a group of Sheff pagans, he was trudging along the hard ways in front of Welch Hall, fists sunk in his pockets, head down under a slouch hat, when he chanced on Tom Regan coming out of the Brick Row. ”

“ He went often to Swazey's rooms, and Regan's, which were centers of discussion. Some of the types that drifted in were incongruous, bizarre, flotsam and jetsam of the class; but in each, patiently resolved, he found something to stir the imagination; and when, under Regan's quickening influence, he stopped to consider what life in the future would mean to them, he began to understand what his friend, the invincible democrat, meant by the inspiring opportunity of college—the vision of a great country that lay on the lips of the men he had only to seek out. ”

“ Stover winced.
"Damn you, Joe!"
"Is it?"
"She'll have to believe what she wants to about me," said Stover slowly. "It's a test."
"No, it isn't a test or a fair test," said Hungerford hotly. "I know everything's all right, boy, but I want to stop anything that might be said. You're hurt now because you know you're misjudged."
"Yes, I am hurt."
"Sure; a rotten bit of luck has put you in a false position. That's the whole matter."
"Joe, I won't tell you," said Stover shortly. "I am mad clear through and through. I'm going to shut up on the whole business. ”

“ His fierce stand for absolute democracy made of his rooms the ante-room of the class, through which all crowds seemed to pass, men of his own kind, socially calculating, glad to be known as the friends of Regan, Hungerford and Story, all rated sure men, and Stover, about whom they began to wonder more and more, as a unique and rebellious personality, which, contrary to precedent, had come to bear down all opposition. ”

“ Le Baron had been more than kind in his proffer of help. He was at a loss to understand why Regan should not see him through his eyes.
"You think I'm finicky," said Regan, breaking the silence.
"Yes, I do," said Stover frankly.
"I guess you and I'll understand each other," said Regan, approving of his directness. "Perhaps I am wrong. But, boy, this place means a great deal to me, and the men that are in it and lead it."
"It's the one place where money makes no difference," said Stover, with a flash—"where you stand for what you are." ”

“ There had been no division there in that spontaneous democracy, and the Dink Stover who had won his way to the top had never sought to isolate himself or curb any natural instinct for skylarking, or sought a reason for a friendship.
"Good Lord!" he said, almost aloud, "in one whole year what have I done? I haven't made one single friend, known what one real man was doing or thinking, done anything I wanted to do, talked out what I wanted to talk, read what I wanted to read, or had time to make the friends I wanted to make. I've been nothing but material—varsity material—society material ”

“ Regan, smoking, said nothing.
"A sort of red-shirt, eh?" said Brockhurst, smiling.
"You always go off on a tangent."
"Well, there's a good deal in what Brocky says," said Regan, nodding slowly, "about bringing us all back into the campus and shutting out the world. It's the men here, all sorts and conditions, that, after all, are big things, the vital thing. I'm thinking over what you're saying, Brocky—not that I follow you altogether, but I see what you're after—I get it."
Stover, on the contrary, was aware of only an antagonism, for his instinct was always to combat new ideas. ”

“ During the summer Tough McCarthy's father had died, and Tough had been forced to forego his college course and take up at once the seriousness of life. Several offers had been made Dink to go in with Hungerford, Tommy Bain, and others of his crowd, but he had decided to room by himself, for a time at least. The decision had come to him as the result of a growing feeling of restlessness, an instinctive desire to be by himself and know again that shy friend Dink Stover, who somehow seemed to have slipped away from him. ”

“ He had long ago surrendered the idea of entering Skull and Bones over the enmity of Reynolds and Le Baron, and this relinquishing somehow robbed him of all the awe that he had once felt. He had returned a man, tempered by knowledge of the world, distinguishing between the incidental in college life and the vital opportunity within his grasp. ”

“ This is the tendency—development away from the campus at the expense of the campus. That's why, when you ask me would I wipe out our business athletics and our professional musical and traveling dramatic clubs, I say, yes, absolutely. I would have the limits of college to be the walls of the campus itself, and we'd see, when men cease to be drafted for one grind or another, whether they couldn't begin to meet to think and to converse. However, that brings up the whole pet problem of education, and, I'm through talking. Go on, Pike; tell us that we are, after all, only schools for character. ”