At Good Old Siwash

George Fitch

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. Little did I think, during the countless occasions on which I have skipped blithely over the preface of a book in order to plunge into the plot, that I should be called upon to write a preface myself some day. And little have I realized until just now the extreme importance to the author of having his preface read.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819913917
• Langue: English

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PREFACE
Little did I think, during the countless occasionson which I have skipped blithely over the preface of a book inorder to plunge into the plot, that I should be called upon towrite a preface myself some day. And little have I realized untiljust now the extreme importance to the author of having his prefaceread.
I want this preface to be read, though I have anuneasy premonition that it is going to be skipped as joyously asever I skipped a preface myself. I want the reader to toil throughmy preface in order to save him the task of trying to follow a plotthrough this book. For if he attempts to do this he will mostcertainly dislocate something about himself very seriously. I havefound it impossible, in writing of college days which are just onedeep-laid scheme after another, to confine myself to one plot. Howcould I describe in one plot the life of the student who carriesout an average of three plots a day? It is unreasonable. So I havedone the next best thing. There is a plot in every chapter. Thisrequires the use of upwards of a dozen villains, an almost equalnumber of heroes, and a whole bouquet of heroines. But I do notbegrudge this extravagance. It is necessary, and that settlesit.
Then, again, I want to answer in this preface anumber of questions by readers who kindly consented to becomeinterested in the stories when they appeared in the SaturdayEvening Post . Siwash isn't Michigan in disguise. It isn'tKansas. It isn't Knox. It isn't Minnesota. It isn't Tuskegee,Texas, or Tufts. It is just Siwash College. I built it myself witha typewriter out of memories, legends, and contributed tales from ascore of colleges. I have tried to locate it myself a dozen times,but I can't. I have tried to place my thumb on it firmly and say,"There, darn you, stay put." But no halfback was ever so elusive asthis infernal college. Just as I have it definitely located on theKnox College campus, which I myself once infested, I look up tofind it on the Kansas prairies. I surround it with infinite cautionand attempt to nail it down there. Instead, I find it in Minnesotawith a strong Norwegian accent running through the course of study.Worse than that, I often find it in two or three places at once. Itis harder to corner than a flea. I never saw such a peripateticschool.
That is only the least of my troubles, too. Thecollege itself is never twice the same. Sometimes I am amazed atits size and perfection, by the grandeur of its gymnasium and thecolossal lines of its stadium. But at other times I cannot find thestadium at all, and the gymnasium has shrunk until it looksamazingly like the old wooden barn in which we once built up Sandowbiceps at Knox. I never saw such a college to get lost in, either.I know as well as anything that to get to the Eta Bita Pie house,you go north from the old bricks, past the new science hall andpast Browning Hall. But often when I start north from the campus, Ifind my way blocked by the stadium, and when I try to dodge it, Irun into the Alfalfa Delt House, and the Eatemalive boarding club,and other places which belong properly to the south. And when I gosouth I frequently lose sight of the college altogether, and can'tfor the life of me remember what the library tower looks like orwhether the theological school is just falling down, or is to bebuilt next year; or whether I ought to turn to my right, and askfor directions at Prexie's house, or turn to my left and crawlunder a freight train which blocks a crossing on the Hither, Yonderand Elsewhere Railroad. If you think it is an easy task to carry awhole college in your head without getting it jumbled, just try ita while.
Then, again, the Siwash people puzzle me. ProfessorGrubb is always a trial. That man alternates a smooth-shaven facewith a full beard in the most startling manner. Petey Simmons isshort and flaxen-haired, long and black-haired, and wide andhatchet-faced in turns, depending on the illustrator. I never knowOle Skjarsen when I see him for the same reason. As for PrinceHogboom, Allie Bangs, Keg Rearick and the rest of them, nobodyknows how they look but the artists who illustrated the stories;and as I read each number and viewed the smiling faces of thesestudents, I murmured, "Goodness, how you have changed!"
So I have struggled along as best I could toadminister the affairs of a college which is located nowhere, hasno student body, has no endowment, never looks the same twice, andcannot be reached by any reliable route. The situation isimpossible. I must locate it somewhere. If you are interested inthe college when you have read these few stories, suppose you huntfor it wherever college boys are full of applied deviltry andcollege girls are distractingly fair; where it is necessary to winfootball games in order to be half-way contented with the universe;where the spring weather is too wonderful to be wasted on CollegeAlgebra or History of Art; and where, whatever you do, or whoeveryou like, or however you live, you can't forget it, no matter howlong you work or worry afterward.
There! I can't mark it on the map, but if you haveever worried a college faculty you'll know the way. GEORGE FITCH.July, 1911.
CHAPTER I
OLE SKJARSEN'S FIRST TOUCHDOWN
Am I going to the game Saturday? Am I? Me? Am Igoing to eat some more food this year? Am I going to draw my paythis month? Am I going to do any more breathing after I get thislungful used up? All foolish questions, pal. Very sillyconversation. Pshaw!
Am I going to the game, you ask me? Is the sun goingto get up to-morrow? You couldn't keep me away from that game ifyou put a protective tariff of seventy-eight per cent ad valorem,whatever that means, on the front gate. I came out to this town onbusiness, and I'll have to take an extra fare train home to make upthe time; but what of that? I'm going to the game, and when theSiwash team comes out I'm going to get up and give as near acorrect imitation of a Roman mob and a Polish riot as my throatwill stand; and if we put a crimp in the large-footed,humpy-shouldered behemoths we're going up against this afternoon,I'm going out to-night and burn the City Hall. Any Siwash man whois a gentleman would do it. I'll probably have to run like thunderto beat some of them to it.
You know how it is, old man. Or maybe you don't,because you made all your end runs on the Glee Club. But I playedfootball all through my college course and the microbe is stillthere. In the fall I think football, talk football, dream football,even though I haven't had a suit on for six years. And when I goout to the field and see little old Siwash lining up against abunch of overgrown hippos from a university with a catalogue asthick as a city directory, the old mud-and-perspiration smell getsin my nostrils, and the desire to get under the bunch and feel thefeet jabbing into my ribs boils up so strong that I have to hold onto myself with both hands. If you've never sat on a hard board andwanted to be between two halfbacks with your hands on theirshoulders, and the quarter ready to sock a ball into your solarplexus, and eleven men daring you to dodge 'em, and nine thousandfriends and enemies raising Cain and keeping him well propped up inthe grandstands – if you haven't had that want you wouldn't know ahealthy, able-bodied want if you ran into it on the street.
Of course, I never got any further along than ascrub. But what's the odds? A broken bone feels just as grand to ascrub as to a star. I sometimes think a scrub gets more realfootball knowledge than a varsity man, because he doesn't have toaddle his brain by worrying about holding his job and keeping hiswind, and by dreaming that he has fumbled a punt and presentedninety-five yards to the hereditary enemies of his college. Iplayed scrub football five years, four of 'em under Bost, thegreatest coach who ever put wings on the heels of atwo-hundred-pound hunk of meat; and while my ribs never lasted longenough to put me on the team, what I didn't learn about the gameyou could put in the other fellow's eye.
Say, but it's great, learning football under a goodcoach. It's the finest training a man can get anywhere on this oldglobule. Football is only the smallest thing you learn. You learnhow to be patient when what you want to do is to chew somebody upand spit him into the gutter. You learn to control your temper whenit is on the high speed, with the throttle jerked wide open andbuzzing like a hornet convention. You learn, by having it told you,just how small and foolish and insignificant you are, and how wellthis earth could stagger along without you if some one were to takea fly-killer and mash you with it. And you learn all this at thetime of life when your head is swelling up until you mistake it fora planet, and regard whatever you say as a volcanicdisturbance.
I suppose you think, like the rest of the chaps whonever came out to practice but observed the game from thedollar-and-a-half seats, that being coached in football is likebeing instructed in German or calculus. You are told what to do andhow to do it, and then you recite. Far from it, my boy! They don'tbother telling you what to do and how to do it on a big footballfield. Mostly they tell you what to do and how you do it. And theydo it artistically, too. They use plenty of language. A footballcoach is picked out for his ready tongue. He must be aconversationalist. He must be able to talk to a greenhorn, withfine shoulders and a needle-shaped head, until that greenhorn wouldpick up the ball and take it through a Sioux war dance to get awayfrom the conversation. You can't reason with football men. They'renot logical, most of them. They are selected for their heels andshoulders and their leg muscles, and not for their ability to lookat you with luminous eyes and say: "Yes, Professor, I think Iunderstand." The way to make 'em understand is to talk about them.Any man can understand you while you are telling him that if hewere just a little bit slower he w