Ralph Henry Barbour

“ I had my chance in the Bursley game and took it, that’s all. They said I won the game, but I didn’t win it any more than you lost to-day’s. I’ve told you all this just to show you, Merrill, that the world doesn’t bust up and blow away because you make a mistake or let a chance slip in a game of football. If it comes to that, every game that is lost can be traced to someone’s failure at some moment in the contest, Merrill. If there were no mistakes the game would be pretty uninteresting. We’re all human and all likely to fall down at a critical moment some time or other. ”

“ And now, side by side, they’re talking it over, laughing at the mishaps, criticising the misplays, praising each other’s good feats, each feeling for the other the respect—yes, and the affection, too—that every brave warrior has felt for a worthy opponent since the world began. Yes, it’s a wonderful game, this football, a gentleman’s game. ”

“ He liked to watch the game and could get as excited and partisan as anyone over it, but as for playing—well, one football hero was enough in a family, and Rodney had confined his athletic interests to baseball and tennis. Of those he was fond, especially tennis. He rather prided himself on his tennis. He had tried football, had even played a whole season on a team composed of grammar school youngsters in Orleans, but he had never become an enthusiast, nor ever made a name for himself. ”

“ At the head of the procession two cheer leaders held a six foot banner of red silk on which “Bursley” was blazoned in big blue letters. Long before they reached the Y at the top of the hill their deep, sonorous slogan had penetrated to the campus, and Maple Hill emptied itself from dormitory and boarding-house and assembled along the road. Bursley always turned into Academy Street and marched through the campus on her way to the field, and always, where the driveway separated in front of Main Hall, she paused and cheered her rival. ”

“ I tell you, Rod, if I had it to do over again I’d make a lot better use of my time than I did both there and at college. A fellow never knows until it’s too late what a lot of chances he is wasting at school. But you are more of a grind than I ever was—you call it noser at Maple Hill, don’t you? And I guess you’ll do better in the study line. I see by your letters home that you’ve gone out for football. More fool you. You haven’t the making of a good player, as I’ve told you lots of times and you’re just wasting your time. ”

“ Kitty turned down the corner of a leaf and nodded slowly. “Yes, I’ve decided that I’ll have to try,” he replied calmly. “Got more time this year. Reading in a paper yesterday that football is great developer of the lungs. Don’t see why it shouldn’t be, eh? Course, a fellow couldn’t rely on football alone. Have to take regular exercises, too. It follows. But in its way, don’t see why football wouldn’t be—er—beneficial. Would it seem so to you, Merrill?”
“Yes.” Rodney struggled to keep from laughing. “Yes, I’d say football might develop the lungs beautifully.” ”

“ Maple Hill expects every man to do his duty. You’ll learn all right, Rod. Bet you’ll be on the second team before the season’s over!”
“Don’t talk silly! And look here, Mudge, use your brain, can’t you? Don’t you see that even if I did learn a little football the school would expect a whole lot of me just because I’m Stanley Merrill’s brother? And I couldn’t deliver the goods, and everyone would be disappointed in me. That’s why I didn’t want to play at all.”
“But if you’re Ginger’s brother,” replied Tad confidently, “you must know how to play. It stands to reason. ”

“ There had been so much to see from the moment the [4] steamer had left its dock in the North River until it had bumped against the big piles at Greenridge that Rodney had forgotten to be lonesome. Besides, to a boy of fifteen, even though he has been brought up to be self-reliant and is fairly accustomed to looking out for himself, there is something inspiriting in journeying alone, in being thrown on his own resources. He experienced a fine feeling of independence as he loitered up the street, and perhaps was guilty of a suggestion of swagger, for which I think he may be excused. ”

“ COTTING IS PUZZLED News travels fast in school, and by ten o’clock the next morning it was known from one end of the campus to the other that Kittson was going to report that afternoon for football practice. The result was that every fellow who could possibly get to the field was on hand long before the fateful hour of three-thirty. Tad, who had the effrontery to walk to a point of observation some ten feet away, declared later that it was worth a thousand mile journey to see the expression on Coach Cotting’s face when Kitty informed him that he would like to try for the team, please. ”

“ I tell you football takes a lot of time away from study just when a fellow needs it most. At the beginning of the year a fellow ought to pay a lot of attention to study, or else he gets in wrong and queers himself at the start. You take my advice, Kid, and let football alone. You say Cotting made you come out. That’s like old Cot, too. But if he hasn’t found out yet that he’s wasting his time on you, you tell him I say he is and that he’s to let you go. Wait until spring and try for baseball. You’re a pretty good baseball player for a young fellow, and you might make good there. ”

“ There’s no harm in playing it earnestly, no harm in doing all you can to win. Playing a game is like anything else. That is, if it’s worth doing it’s worth doing [268] well. But let’s remember that it is a game, fellows. Let’s play it cleanly and like gentlemen. And if we lose, let’s lose like gentlemen. But, and I say this convincedly, if you play as you can play you won’t lose!”
Then there were cheers, sturdy, confident cheers, for the coach, and for the second team that wasn’t there to hear, and finally for the school. ”

“ It was still anybody’s game. Bursley and Maple Hill were each confident of ultimate victory and so the cheering and singing that began anew when the teams had trotted, blanketed, from sight of the spectators was as loud and hearty as ever. Bursley, with her two hundred supporters massed along the middle of the north stand, put the local cheering section on its merits. Their cheerfully reiterated refrain of “Bursley! Bursley! Hi! Hi! Hi!” sung over and over to an old tune, brought laughter and applause from across the empty gridiron. Maple Hill came back with:
“Cheer for the Green-and-Gray! ”

“ But, leaving out metaphors, fellows, we’ve got a hard game ahead of us. Bursley has a good team and she’s coming across the river to-morrow to win—that is, she’s coming to try to win. Whether she does or does not depends now on you. You may start handicapped by the absence of your captain, although that is not certain. If you do, you’ll just have to work all the harder. My experience has shown me that the competitor who enters with a handicap against him is generally the one who wins. ”

“ Cheer the victor of the fray!
Maple Hill will win to-day!
You can hear them saying:
“‘March, march on to victory!
We’re the men to do or die!
We’ve the courage and the will!
Rah! Rah! Rah! Maple Hill!’”
Into Bow Street they swung, into Arrow and, finally, into Larch, where, opposite the gymnasium, they stopped and cheered the team, the coach, the trainer and everyone else they could [281] think of. Then the drum thumped and they went on, Borden swinging his big megaphone like a giant baton, and turned into the field. Bursley welcomed them with long-drawn “A-a-ays!” ”

“ Cotting.
“If he’d only fight!” responded Terry Doyle.
“It isn’t that. He can fight. But he doesn’t seem to know when it’s time to.” Cotting shook his head for the twentieth time over Rodney’s shortcomings, and then, as always, added leniently, “Well, we’ll give him a little more time. He may find himself yet.”
But if Rodney had his times of discouragement, not so Phineas Kittson. Kitty went serenely [237] ahead, overcoming all obstacles in much the same way as a strong-headed bull might walk through a fence by the simple expedient of putting his head down and not thinking of splinters. ”

“ At grammar school, back at home, Rodney’s friends and companions had viewed his studiousness with surprise, and for awhile with disapproval. Finding eventually, however, that aside from his strange love for lessons he was very much the same as they were, they forgave him his peculiarity. But at Maple Hill scholarship was not regarded askance. In fact, Maple Hill rather went in for learning, and Rodney found himself in congenial surroundings. Maple Hill had its own local idiom, and in its language to study was to nose, and one who was of professed studiousness was a noser. ”

“ And there’s young Smith, fat and flabby and lazy when he came up, with only a sneering laugh for the form of school patriotism that caused other boys to keep their bodies clean and healthy and to toil on gridiron or diamond or cinder path for the glory of the school. ”

“ Doyle shook his head. “Blessed if I know. Guess he lacks football instinct.”
“‘Football instinct,’” echoed the coach smilingly. “You’ve been reading stories, Terry. ‘There ain’t no such critter’ as football instinct. Instinct is a natural impulse. You may say that a boy has a natural impulse toward athletics and, if he happened to come of athletic [141] parents, you’re probably right. But football hasn’t been played long enough in this country to generate instinct, if you see what I mean. ”

“ He liked Jack Billings immensely; everyone did, he found; and he liked Tad Mudge and Pete Greenough and Tom Trainor. Warren Hoyt he thought disagreeable. Warren put on airs and pretended to be bored by everything. Stacey Trowbridge was a quiet fellow who kept to himself a good [49] deal and was hard to know. Rodney thought that he would probably like Stacey if he ever got really acquainted with him. As for Phineas—well, Rodney realized that he would have to make the best of that strange roommate of his. Not that Kitty caused any trouble. He didn’t. Let Kitty alone and Kitty let you alone. ”

“ Rodney found time to play a little tennis, sometimes with Tad alone on the school courts and sometimes with the twins, joined in several diversions of the Vests, and so did not want for recreation. For, to be quite truthful, being a member of the football team, even if only a substitute on the second, is not by any means all recreation. There’s pleasure in it, but the hard work outweighs the fun. ”

“ A few minutes later they made their escape through the narrow gate and turned northward along Hill Street.
“You see,” confided May, “it was the dumplings.”
“What was the dumplings?” asked Rodney, perplexed.
“That made us bored. They always do. We’re very fond of them, and Norah gives them to us for Sunday dinner quite often. But she oughtn’t to, because they make us feel very bored.”
“Bored is a new name for it!” laughed Tad. “I’d call it indigestion!”
“Oh, but it really isn’t! At least, I don’t think it is. Do you, Matty?” ”

“ In front of him at the instant stretched an open path to the goal line. From the stands came frenzied cries of delight, from the enemy hoarse shouts of warning. Had Rodney started on the instant and made straight for the goal line he would have scored, and Maple Hill would have won another hard fought battle. But for just the instant that it took to turn the opponent’s confusion into action Rodney hesitated. The ball should have been Peterson’s, he realized, [252] and by some chance it had come to him. For an infinitesimal instant of time that thought crowded back all others. ”

“ It was the first time Stacey had called him by his first name. Rodney felt happier than ever, and a little bit proud. To-day practice went with a vim. Even tackling the dummy seemed rather good sport, and usually most of them hated it. There was a full twenty minutes of scrimmage later. Rodney and Kitty were on the second team, Kitty as substitute guard and Rodney as substitute left half. Both got into the play in the second ten minutes and both performed acceptably if not brilliantly. The coach seemed to take a good deal of notice of Phineas, and more than once instructed him. ”

“ The fact that football was proving a very good lung developer, though, partly reconciled him to the latter objection. But having to go without his spectacles was a more serious matter, for Kitty was lamentably near sighted and for a while felt quite helpless. Tad’s suggestion that he wear automobile goggles that strapped around his head was not accepted seriously.
Maple Hill played Dudley Academy to a standstill the last Saturday in October, and as Dudley had a strong team that had proved hitherto well nigh impregnable the Green-and-Gray was well pleased. ”

“ Terry Doyle shook his head hopelessly.
“They’ll play on the defense now,” went on Mr. Cotting. “It’s a time to try everything we have, Terry. We can’t lose any more and we may win something. We might put in Burnham, too.”
“All right, sir. You know best. But Tyson still looks good.”
“I know, but—Who’s got that ball? He’s down! Fumbled! Good work, Hunter! He’s played a good game, Hunter. Well, we’ll try Merrill, I guess. I’ll send him in after this play. Merrill!”
Rodney ran up, trailing his blanket behind him. The coach took his arm and led him along with them as they walked. ”