It was terrible. We scarcely dared to cut out our m.u.f.flers enough to whistle to each other on the street. By spring we were desperate. We had lost the basket-ball championship. The glee club was ruined.

Muggledorfer had b.u.mped us in football--that was the year before Ole Skja.r.s.en came to school--and college spirit at Siwash had been gummed up until it could have been successfully imitated by a four-thousand-year-old mummy. Our college meetings resembled the overflow from a funeral around the front steps. We used to shut down all the windows, say "shsh" nine times, and then write out our college yell on curl papers and burn the papers. You could have swapped Siwash off for a correspondence school without noticing any difference in the reverberations. That was Petey Simmons' first year in college--as a matter of fact, he was a Senior prep. I've told you more or less about Petey before. He was the only son of one of these country bankers who manage to get as much fun out of a half million as a New Yorker could out of a whole railroad. Petey was a little chap who had always had what he wanted and would cheerfully sit up all night thinking up new things to want. He wasn't a Freshman yet, but he could give points to all the college in the matter of explosive clothes and nifty ways of being expensive to Dad. He couldn't get along without coat-cut underwear long before we had heard of it, and you could tell by looking at his shoes just what the rest of the school would be wearing in two years. That was Petey all the way through. He was first and Father Time was nowhere, forty miles back with a busted tire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Martha caused some mild sensation _Page 63_]

Petey took to college life like a kid to candy and just soaked himself in college spirit. He proposed his sixty-five-dollar banjo for membership in the club and went in with it of course. He was elected yell-master before he had been in school two weeks, and if you ever want to know how much noise can come out of a comparatively small orifice you should have seen him emitting riot and pandemonium in the second half of a lively football game. Naturally, it worried Petey almost to death to see the dear old Coll. disintegrating under the Scroggs Inquisition, and he used to sit around the frat house with his head on his hands for hours, smoking his pipe, which had the largest bowl in school, and combing his convolutions for a plan. Then, along in March, he electrified the whole school by taking Martha Scroggs to the college promenade.

Martha was old Malachi's daughter. We hadn't known it, but she had been in school all that year. She was a quiet girl who was designed like a tall problem in plane geometry. While it was possible for a clock to run in the same room with her, still she was not what you might call a picnic to look at. She was the kind of girl a man would look at once and then go off and admire the scenery, even if it only consisted of a ninety-acre cornfield and a grain elevator. Martha was only about eighteen, and I never could understand how she got on to the styles of thirty-six years ago and wore them as fluently as she did.

Naturally, Martha had gotten along in her studies without being pestered by society to any extent. I sometimes think this helped old Scroggs to hate us. She was his only child, and he had taken all the affection and interest that most people distribute over their entire acquaintanceship and concentrated it on her. They had grown up together since she became a motherless baby, and they did say that while you could bombard the old man with gatling guns without jarring his opinions he would lie down, jump through a hoop or play dead whenever Martha wanted him to.

Naturally Martha caused some mild sensation when she appeared at the biggest social spasm of the college year, with her sleeves bulging in the wrong place, and nothing but her own hair on her head. But what caused the real sensation was the fact that Petey had been released from the workhouse the day before. Yes, sir--just turned out with seven more days to serve. He had thrown a brick at a Soph.o.m.ore who was trying to catch him and dye his hair the Soph.o.m.ore colors, and the brick had annihilated one of the city's precious thirty-seven-cent street lights.

Petey had gone to the works for ten days, leaving a new dress suit that hadn't been dedicated and unlimited woe among the girls, for he was a Cla.s.s A fusser.

Petey was non-committal about his insanity. He had the best eye for beauty in the college, and yet he had been taking Miss Scroggs around to church socials and town affairs for two months. But college boys aren't slow, whatever you want to say about them. We had faith in Petey and we backed up his game. We gave Martha the time of her young life at the Prom.--pulled off three imitation rows over her program--and then we turned in that winter and gave her a good, hot rush--which is a technical college expression for keeping a girl dated up so that she doesn't have time to wash the dishes at home once a month.

I must say that it wasn't much of a punishment, either, when we got acquainted with Martha. She was a good fellow clear through and had a smile that illuminated her plain face like a torchlight parade. Of course, after you get out of school you learn that beauty is only skin deep and seldom affects the brain; but this is a wonderful discovery for a college boy to make when there are so many raving beauties about him that he has to take a nap in the afternoon in order to dream about all of them. At any rate, we took Martha to everything that came along, one of us or another, and before a month we didn't have to pretend very much to sc.r.a.p for her dances, even if you did have to lug her around the room by main strength--she was as heavy on her feet as a motor-bus.

April came and the first baseball game with it, and Saunders, our pitcher, managed to draw a thirty-day sentence for stealing a steam roller one noon and racing off down the avenue with a fat cop in pursuit. We nearly fell dead once more when Saunders came walking into chapel three days later. He had been released by Judge Scroggs with a warning never under any circ.u.mstances to do anything of any sort at any time any more, and been a.s.sured that he was nothing more than hangman's meat. But he had been released! That night he took Martha Scroggs to the Alfalfa Delt hop. And the next day he held Muggledorfer down to two hits and no runs, with Martha waving hurrahs at him from a tally-ho.

We wanted to elect Petey president of the college, for we laid the whole affair to him. But he wouldn't talk at all. If anything, he seemed a little sore about the whole thing. Martha didn't loosen up, either. She just smiled and told those of us who knew her well enough to ask questions that Saunders was a lovely boy and that she had had that date with him for ages--flies' ages, I guess she meant, for Alice Marsters, one of the beauties of the school, stayed home from the dance after announcing that she was going with Saunders, and never seemed able to remember him by sight after that.

About a week afterward Maxwell, the college orator, a very solemn member of the Siwash brain trust, was arrested for ever so little a thing. I believe he so far forgot himself as to help give the college yell on Main Street the night his literary society won a debate. Anyway, he got ten days, and he was due in three days to orate for Siwash against the whole Northwest. It was the biggest event of the school year--the oratorical contest. We'd won seven of them--more than any other school in the sixteen states--and we stood a good show with Maxwell. We were crazy to win. Of course n.o.body ever goes to the contests; but we all stay up all night to hear the results, and when we win, which we do once every other college generation, we try to make the celebration bigger than the stories of other celebrations that have been handed down. We'd been planning this celebration all winter and had everything combustible in Jonesville spotted.

Some of us were for going out and burning up the workhouse, but before we got around to it Maxwell appeared. It was the day before the contest.

He'd served only two days, but instead of rushing right off to rehea.r.s.e his oration, which he couldn't do in the workhouse, owing to an accountable prejudice the tramps and other prisoners had against oratory, he took the evening off and went driving with Martha Scroggs--about as queer a thing for him to do as it would be for the Pope to take a young lady to the theatre. But we didn't ask any questions. We cheered him off on the midnight train, and the next night, when he won and we got the news, we turned out and built a bonfire of everything that wasn't nailed down. And when the police got done chasing us they had nineteen of the brightest and best sons of Siwash bottled up in the b.o.o.by hatch.

We didn't mind that on general principles. The bonfire was worth it, especially since we managed to get a few palings from old Scroggs' fence for it--but, as usual, the wrong men got pinched. There was the intercollegiate track meet due in two weeks, and there, in the list of felons, were Evans, our crack sprinter, Petersen, our hammer heaver, and yours truly, who could pole vault about as high as they run elevators in Europe, even if he was only a sub-Freshman with field mice in his hair.

Now, this was really serious. We could afford to lose an oratorical contest--it just meant no bonfire for another year--but we had our hearts set on that track meet. We were up against our lifelong rivals--Muggledorfer, the State Normal, Kiowa, Hambletonian, and all the rest of them. We had to win--I don't know why. Beats all how many things you have to do in college that don't seem so absolutely necessary a few years afterward. Anyhow, if we three point-gobblers had to spend the next ten days in the works instead of rounding into form, the points Siwash would win in that meet could be added up by a three-year-old boy who was a bad scholar. It was so desperate that we hired a lawyer and laid the case before him that night as we sat in our horrid cells--they wouldn't take Hinckley for bail any more.

"Get a continuance," said he. And the next morning he appeared with us before the awful presence and demanded the continuance on the score of important evidence, lack of time to perfect a defense, other engagements, poor crops, Presidential election, and goodness knows what--regular lawyer style, you know.

Old Scroggs glared at us the way an unusually hungry tiger might look at a lamb that was being taken away to get a little riper. "I cannot object to a reasonable continuance," he said sourly. "And I don't deny that you will need all the defense you can get. The case is an atrocious one, and I propose to do my small part toward putting down arson and riot in this unhappy town. You will appear two weeks from this morning."

The field meet was two weeks from that afternoon! And we didn't have a ghost of a defense!

We three sc.r.a.ped up the required bail and went back to college feeling cheerful as a man who has been told that his hanging has been postponed until his wedding morning. Of course we sent for Petey Simmons. He arrived dejected. "No use, fellows," he remarked as he came in the door.

"I know what you all want. You all want engagements with Martha Scroggs.

It's no go. I've been over to see her and she's afraid to tackle it. The old man's told her that if she runs around with any more of this disgraceful, disgusting and nine other epitheted college bunch he'll show her the door. Says he's been worked and he's through. Says he's going to give you the limit and, if possible, he's going to give you enough to keep you in all vacation instead of letting you loose on a defenseless world all summer. That's how strong you are up at the Scroggs house."

There you were! Siwash College, the pride of six decades, mollycoddled by an old parody on a gorilla with a grouch against the solar system! We trained these two weeks in hopes that a chariot of fire would come up and take the old man down, but there was nothing doing. He remained abnormally healthy and supernaturally mad. On the morning before the fatal day we all wrote letters home, explaining that we had secured elegant jobs in various emporiums over the city and wouldn't be home until late in the summer. Then we shivered a shake or two apiece and got ready to retire from this vain world for somewhere between thirty and ninety days. Just about that time Petey Simmons blew down to the college, bursting with information. He demanded a meeting of the Athletic Council at once and of us three sterling athletes as well. We were all in order in ten minutes.

"Fellows, it's this way," said Petey. "Martha Scroggs is very loyal to the college, as you all know. She has done her very best with old Fireworks, but it hasn't made a dent in him. No little old party or buggy ride is going to get any one out this time. There's just one chance, she says, and she's taken it. This morning she confessed to her father that she is engaged to one of the men who is to come up for trial to-morrow morning. They think the old man will be well enough to unmuzzle before noon, but he's been acting like a bad case of dog-days all morning. He's given her twenty-four hours to name the man--and Martha thinks that by night he'll be resting comfortably enough to promise to let him off to-morrow. And she has given us the privilege of choosing the man she's engaged to. Now, it's up to this council to pick out the lucky chap. It's our only hope, fellows. We'll have one point-winner anyway--unless the old man eats him alive to-morrow."

Evans and Petersen turned pale--they had real fiancees in college. But each stepped forward n.o.bly and offered himself for the sacrifice. I stepped out, too, though I was so young at that time that I didn't know any more how to go about being engaged to a girl than I did about my Greek lessons. Then the council began to discuss the choice. And just there the trouble began.

It all came about through the frats, of course. Frats are a good thing all right, but they stir up more trouble in a college than a Turk's nine wives can make for him. Ashcroft was president of the council. He was an Alfalfa Delt. So was Evans. Ashcroft hung out for Evans like a bulldog hanging to a tramp. Beeman, a council member, was a Sigh Whoop and so was Petersen. Beeman argued that Petersen could win more points than the rest of the school put together and that it would be unpatriotic, unmanly, disgraceful and un-Siwash-like not to select him. Bailey, the third member, was an Eta Bita Pie, and while sub-Freshmen are not supposed to be anything with Greek letters on, we understood each other, and I was to be initiated the next fall. Bailey pointed out caustically that to imprison a sub-Freshman would be to ruin his reputation, break his spirit and disgrace the school--that one world's record was worth fifty points, and that, if allowed to, I would pole-vault so high the next day that I would have to come down in a parachute. The result was the council broke up in one big row and Martha Scroggs spent the afternoon unengaged.

About five o'clock Bailey came over to the track, where we were going through the last sad rites, and hauled me aside.

"Take off those togs, kid," he said. "I've got a stunt. These yaps are going to hold another meeting to-night to decide on Martha Scroggs'

fiance. In the meantime you're going out to ask the old man for her.

Understand? You're going to ask him and take what he gives you like a little man and beg off for to-day, and then you're going to break the pole-vault record. See?"

Unfortunately, I did. I liked the job just as well as I would like getting boiled in oil. But one must stand by one's frat, you know--Gee, how proud I felt when I said that! I didn't have any idea how an engaged man ought to look or act, but I went home, put on the happiest duds I had, and shinned up the street about eight o'clock.

The man-eating dog of the Scroggses was somewhere else, gorging himself on another unfortunate, and I got to the front door all right. I rang the bell. Some one opened the door. It was Judge Scroggs. He looked at me as one might look at a bug which had wandered on to the table and was trying to climb over a fork.

"Young man," he said, "what do you want?"

Did you ever have your voice slink around behind your larynx and refuse to come out? Mine did. I only wish I could have slunk with it. I started talking twice. My tongue went all right, but I couldn't slip in the clutch and make any sound.

"Well," roared Scroggs, "what is it?"

That jarred me loose. "Mr. Scroggs," I sputtered, "I am engaged to your daughter. I want to marry her. I want your permission. I--I'll be good to her, sir."

He glared at me for a minute. "Oh!" he said with a queer look. "Well, come on in with the rest of them."

I followed him into the parlor. There sat Evans and Petersen. They were older than I, but if I looked as scared as they did I wish somebody had shot me. In the corner was another student. His name was Driggs. His specialty was cotillons.

We four sat and looked at each other with awful suspicions. Something was excessively wrong. I felt indignant. Can't a fellow go to see his fiancee without being annoyed by a Roman mob? I noticed Petersen and Evans looked indignant, too. We took it out by staring Driggs almost into the collywobbles. Who was he anyway, and why was he billy-goating around?

Old Scroggs had called Martha. He sat and looked at us so peculiarly that I got gooseflesh all over. Here I was, a Freshman so green that the cows looked longingly at me, and up against the job of saving the college, winning out for the frat and becoming engaged to a girl I didn't know before a whole roomful of rivals. I wasn't up to the job. If only I had gone to the works! They seemed a haven of sweet peace just then.

Martha Scroggs came into the room. She looked at the quartet. We looked at her with hunted looks. Scroggs looked at all of us.

"Martha," he said at last, "each one of these four young idiots says he is engaged to you. Which of them shall I throw out?"

The jig was up! The college was ruined! Each one of us had the same bright thought!

For a moment I thought Martha was going to faint. She looked at the mob with a dazed expression. You could almost see her brain grabbing for some explanation. It was just for a moment, though. My, but that girl was a wonder! She gulped once or twice. Then she smiled in an inspired sort of way.

"None of them, Papa," she said ever so sweetly. "I am engaged to all of them."

The eruption of Vesuvius was only a little sputter to what followed. For a moment we had hopes that old Scroggs would explode. I think if he had had us there alone he would have tried to hang us. But every tyrant has his master, so before long we began to see the halter on old Scroggs.

And his daughter held the leading rope. She let him rave about so long and then she retired into her pocket-handkerchief and turned on a regular equinoctial. Scroggs looked more uncomfortable than we felt. He took her in his arms and there was a family reconciliation. Every little while Martha would look over his shoulder at us four hopefuls sitting up against the wall as lively as wooden Indians, and then she would bury her face in her handkerchief again and shake her shoulders and writhe with grief--or maybe it was something else. Martha always did have a pretty keen sense of humor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: My, but that girl was a wonder!

_Page 74_]

Suddenly Scroggs remembered us and we went out of the house like projectiles fired from a very loud gun. We cussed each other all the way home--we three athletes. We would have cussed Driggs, but he sneaked the other way and we lost him.

The next morning we went up to police court in our old clothes. Judge Scroggs looked at us sourly when our turn came.

"Young men," he said, "my daughter has admitted that she has been foolish enough to engage herself provisionally to all of you, with the idea of choosing the hero in this afternoon's games. I do not admire her taste. I think she is indeed reckless to fall in love with collegians when there are so many honest cab drivers and grocery boys to choose from. But I have, in the interests of peace, consented to allow you to compete this afternoon. You are discharged. I do this the more willingly because I have seen you here before and shall again. You may go."

We did go, and when we got through that afternoon the k.n.o.bby-legged athletes from our rival schools looked like quarter horses plowing home just ahead of the next race. Siwash won by an enormous lead and we three were the stars of the meet. Why shouldn't we be when our fiancee sat in a box in the grandstand and cheered us impartially? More than that, old Scroggs sat with her and I have an idea that he got excited, too, in the breath-catching parts.

I think that engagement business must have broken the old man's spirit, or else so much a.s.sociation with college people began to waken dormant brain cells in his head. The rest of the rioters got out of the workhouse right away, and that fall he retired from the bench, declaring that if he was to have a college student for a son-in-law, as looked extremely likely, he needed to put in all of his time at home protecting his property. In honor of his retirement we had a pajama parade which was nine blocks long and forty-two blocks loud, and a platoon of six policemen led the way.