_ CHAPTER IV
We have just faced our first serious problem.
Said my wife to me one day not long ago, handing me the newspaper as she spoke, "Look at this, my dear. Little Fred has been selected to play on the University foot-ball eleven."
By way of contradistinction to me, who am rather short and slight, my namesake and eldest son is still habitually spoken of in the family as Little Fred, notwithstanding that he is a head taller than I, and a strongly built, muscular youth into the bargain. He is in college--a sophomore--and I do not hesitate to declare that when he left school he was about as clean cut a young fellow, both mentally and physically, as anyone would wish to see. I have always encouraged him to take a sensible amount of exercise and have been glad that he seemed fond of the athletic sports in vogue among the growing lads of the country and did not need to be prodded, like his brother David for instance, to keep out of doors. I have been aware that he has been a prominent member of an amateur base-ball nine and foot-ball eleven, and I have been proud to follow in a confused sort of fashion, for the technical terms have changed sadly since I was a boy, the defeats and victories, principally the latter, I think, of those illustrious organizations. Although I was never his equal physically, I look back with considerable pride to my own foot-ball days, and my children have heard me repeatedly describe the famous dash which I once made with the ball from one end of the field to the other, with Tom Ruggs, the butcher's boy, at my heels, and how he never caught me until after I had sent it flying over the goal line, and we had won the game. That was a long time ago now, and we played a very different game, as I have since discovered. I hear a great deal said nowadays about the lack of attention which the older generation gave to manly sports. We did not make much fuss about them, I agree, and consequently some boys may have been allowed to grow to manhood without proper physical training; but it seems to me that most of us were playing something in the fresh air the greater portion of the time. However, I have always been a great believer in manly sports and I wish to continue to be.
When my boy entered college I remember telling him kindly but explicitly that it was a costly matter to send him there, and that I should expect him to make the most of the opportunities for improvement which were offered him. I knew that he was not especially clever at his books like his brother David, yet at the same time I had set him down as a sensible, wide-awake fellow with at least an average amount of brains and with plenty of tact and common sense. It was my hope that he would devote himself to political economy and mathematics, in which case I should try and find an opening for him after graduation with the firm of Leggatt & Paine, our leading bankers. I expected, of course, that he would continue to take a suitable amount of exercise, to keep himself in good trim; row on the river and not altogether renounce base-ball. Indeed, although I was aware that collegiate sports were a much more serious tax on a student's time than in my day, I should not have seriously demurred had he been selected to row on the University crew or play on the University base-ball nine. I should have greatly preferred to have him steer clear of both; still, I try to remember that I was once his age myself, and I am given to understand that the rivalry between the several colleges in these matters is more intense than ever. There was a time when nothing seemed to me of such vital interest as whether Harvard or Yale won the boat race. The Darwinian theory paled in comparative importance beside it. Indeed, I still take more interest in it than it deserves, perhaps. Nevertheless, I took pains to impress upon Fred that his studies were to be his first consideration.
We did not play foot-ball in college when I was there, which was the reason, perhaps, why I assumed that it was a boy's game, to be shuffled off with other purely youthful sports when one became a dignified student. I had heard here and there the statement that it was a rough game, which did not impress me very much, recalling as I did my own hacked shins. It was not until I read my friend Horace Plympton's letter to the _Evening Times_, that my attention was particularly called to the matter. Horace seemed to have lashed himself into a perfect fury on the subject. He stigmatized the modern game as it was played by University students as a barbaric spectacle, dangerous to limb, if not to life. Horace has always been more or less of a pepper-pot, but he is not exactly a croaker, and he served in the war with distinction. Hence his diatribe made me frown, even though it rather amused me. It was written in the autumn of the year before Fred went to Cambridge, and I read it aloud to the family circle as being of interest to a sub-freshman.
"What perfect nonsense!" exclaimed that profound young gentleman, when I had finished. "The man who wrote that letter is a flub-dub, father."
Though not aware of the precise meaning of this epithet, I realized that it was a severe arraignment. I felt, too, that my manner of reading the communication had given license to my boy's tongue. I answered, therefore, with some unction:
"The writer, Horace Plympton, is a brave and sensible man. I know him very well."
"I guess he never kicked foot-ball."
"In his day the young men who were fortunate enough to be sent to college were better occupied. Foot-ball? It is a game for high-schools, not universities."
"It is the greatest game of the day, father," said my sub-freshman, with the haughty consciousness of superior knowledge which the waning, though reigning, generation has so often to bow to.
Of course that settled the question. I believe that I made a futile remark to the effect that the president ought to put a stop to it, or something of the sort, but I knew enough to know that I had been convicted of error. I saw Fred glance at his sisters, and all three at their mother, who looked anxious in her desire not to seem to take sides against me, though manifestly sympathizing with them. I said to myself that if foot-ball was the greatest game of the day, I was not going to put my foot down and prevent my boys from playing it merely because I was old fogy enough not to understand that it was the greatest game of the day, and Horace Plympton had written a letter to the _Evening Times_. Accordingly, when the time came for Fred to go to college I merely cautioned him generally against wasting his time, and uttered no fulminations against foot-ball in particular.
"On the University foot-ball eleven?" I echoed, taking the newspaper from my wife, and as I read I felt a little lump of emotional pride rise in my throat. There it was, sure enough, in black and white, though I could not help wondering why the fact was of importance enough to be chronicled in the daily press along with the telegraphic news, and the deaths and marriages. It was evidently a matter of considerable moment, though I could not quite see why.
"He will be perfectly delighted," said Josephine. "He has been extremely doubtful whether he would be chosen. Oh, Fred," she exclaimed, in a tone of solicitude, "do you really think it's safe?"
How exactly that was like a woman. Here was my wife, who had secretly aided and abetted her son in his design, and been the recipient of his hopes and fears on the subject, turning to me, who had dared to utter a feeble protest or two only to be scoffed at, and summarily sat upon, asking if the game was really safe.
"There are certain risks in this world that a man has to take," I answered, borrowing the sentiment which she had uttered on the occasion of our affair with the burglars.
Josephine did not appreciate my irony. "Why, oh why, did you give your consent to his playing foot-ball?" she asked, tragically. "I understand that it is a terribly rough and dangerous game."
"I give my consent? This is monstrous, Josephine, monstrous. I did not wish to be a killjoy and a marplot, or I would have forbidden Fred to touch a foot-ball after he entered college. Had you, my dear, given me the least bit of support, I should have nipped the whole business in the bud. Yet now you seek to throw the blame on me."
The suggestion of the dire parental sternness of which I had evidently just missed being guilty caused her thoughts to fly off on an opposite tack. "The poor darling, his heart was so set on being chosen," she said. "I am sure, Fred, it would have been a terrible blow to him if he had not succeeded."
"I dare say that it was his chief motive in going to college," I interjected, a little indignantly.
"I really think it was," she murmured, with sweet maternal sympathy. "I shall live though in constant dread until it is over and done with."
"What is over and done with?"
"The Harvard-Yale foot-ball match. It's on account of that he's been so anxious to belong. And, Fred, he said to me the other day that if he was chosen, he hoped that we would go to Springfield to see the game. It is terrible to think that I might see him killed before my eyes, but he is set on our going."
"It is all a piece of infernal nonsense," I remarked, with majestic dignity; nevertheless, the idea did not strike me as a bad one. To tell the truth, I was beginning to be curious to see this game, which, according to the views of my eldest son, was the greatest game of the day, and to those of Horace Plympton a barbaric spectacle.
And now befell me a curious experience; at least it seemed to me such. I found that I, who, though considered an industrious and painstaking lawyer, have never awakened any especial interest in the community, had acquired lustre and importance by virtue of the circumstance that I had a son on the University foot-ball eleven. College graduates of various ages, who had hitherto classed me with the general run of their acquaintance, grew suddenly cordial and congratulatory in their manner, and I had the satisfaction of reading in the public prints an item to the effect that Frederick ----, the father of the well-known half-back of the Harvard University foot-ball eleven, had recently visited New York for a few days. Altogether I had become, for the first time in my existence, an object of consequence to my fellow-citizens, and almost to the world at large.
As for the hero himself, he bore his importance modestly and meekly, though he evidently considered that he had rescued the family name from obscurity and set it gloriously in the public eye by dint of his renown. He was in strict training, and fiercely conscientious as to what he ate and drank, and as to his hours of sleep. Little was heard in the house when he was at home but conjecture and estimate as to who was likely to win in the impending contest. Had I been properly attentive, I might have learned from his lips not merely the names and nicknames of the members of the respective teams and the positions on the field they were to fill, but their weights in fighting trim, their fine points both as foot-ball kickers and as men, and not improbably their love affairs. When now and then, as occasionally happened, I betrayed by an unfortunate question or by unappreciative silence my lack of familiarity with this or that celebrity, the look of wondering pity with which my boy, and indeed every member of the family, regarded me made me feel myself to be a veritable ignoramus. Josephine and her girls knew the whole business from beginning to end, and I must confess that I secretly drank in more than I pretended.
A fortnight before the match was to come off Sam Bangs, who, as some of you will remember, is a second cousin of mine and rather a pal of Josephine's, appeared at the house one evening and laid before me, in his engaging, plausible fashion, a project which he and his wife and my wife had cooked up between them. He and Josephine assured me, in the first place, that I wouldn't have the least bother in the matter, and that everything would be perfectly plain running for the reason that Sam was intimate with the manager of the railroad, and that little Fred had secured the requisite number of tickets for the game. Then he proceeded to inform me that they had conceived the idea of going to see the game at Springfield in a private special car; that the manager had promised to let him have one, and that it would be much more jolly to go with a few friends like that and have a luncheon comfortably served by a caterer than to be lumped in the common cars with Tom, Dick, and Harry, who were liable to be noisy students, or still more noisy prize-fighters, and starve; that there were several people crazy to go whom it would be very pleasant to have, notably Mrs. Guy Sloane and Mrs. Walter Warner (nee Polly Flinders), and that the expense would be comparatively trifling.
"I think it would be particularly nice, Fred, on Josie's account," added my wife. "I should ask two or three of her girls, and some boys to match. She is inclined to be shy, and this would be just the occasion to help her to feel at her ease with young men. Then I thought you would like to have a chat with Polly Warner; you so rarely see her now, and you and she used to get on so well together; and you know Mrs. Guy Sloane always stimulates you. I think you would have a very good time; and, as Sam says, it's a Dutch treat, so the expense would fall on everybody alike."
Seeing that Josephine's heart was set on going in just that way, I did not attempt to interpose objections. I took the liberty, however, of remarking that, though we as the parents of one of the players had a reason for going, I could not understand why a cultivated woman like Mrs. Guy Sloane was willing, crazy indeed according to what they had said, to take so much trouble to see a pack of college youths knock each other about. In answer to this, Sam declared that every man, woman, and child in the city who could possibly get away was going to Springfield; that trains were to be run every fifteen minutes, and that no less than twenty special private cars in addition to ours had been chartered for the occasion. Again I hung my diminished head before this broadside of superior information. Sam was perfectly right. I have rarely seen such a crowd in a small compass as was collected at the railway station before we started. How we ever reached Sam, who made himself visible to me at last across an ocean of heads by lifting himself on the shoulders of obliging friends, and found our special car seems mysterious to me as I look back upon it. It really appeared as though every man, woman, and child in the city _were_ going, from the highest officials of the State and our leading citizens in various fields to the veriest street Arab who had managed to beg, borrow, or earn the requisite fare. Everybody, or nearly everybody, carried a flag, and Josephine seemed to think that I, as a Harvard man and the father of the half-back of the team, was lacking in enthusiasm because I had not got possession of one.
"It will be time enough for enthusiasm when we win the match," I remarked, sententiously, though what with the general crowd and the files of students bubbling over with Rah-rah-rahs as they tore along the platform to find seats in the several trains, I was beginning to feel very tremulous about the gills, so to speak.
I doubt if Josephine heard my answer. Her attention had suddenly been absorbed by the sight of Mrs. Willoughby Walton, on the way to her special car, in all her glory, which consisted of a new seal-brown costume with tiger-skin trimmings and a retinue comprising Gillespie Gore, Dr. Henry Meredith, the specialist on nervous diseases (who, like everybody else, had evidently taken a day off), and half a dozen youths who looked young enough to be freshmen. She was frantically waving a crimson flag, which she shook at the windows of our car as she passed with the spirit of a belle of nineteen.
"That woman is simply wonderful," murmured my darling. "She is fifty-five if she is a day, but she will not give up."
"Rah! rah! rah! Harvard!" I ejaculated hysterically. I felt that I was getting rattled, as my famous son calls it.
"Look here, Cousin Fred," said Sam Bangs at my shoulder. "Seen the morning paper? Here he is cabinet size and a full family history annexed. It's something which his great-grandchildren will be proud of. Where the dickens, by the way, is Mrs. Sloane? I've been looking for her everywhere in the station. She's coming, because she telephoned me last night to inquire if I could squeeze one more into our car. We'll be off in another five minutes."
"What _do_ you mean, Sam? What is it?" asked Josephine, as she seized and held to the light the newspaper which he was extending.
I looked over her shoulder and broke into a cold perspiration at beholding an execrable three-quarters length cut of my darling son superscribed by his name in holograph.
"It's an indecent outrage," I hissed.
"It isn't like him in the least. No one would ever know who it was. It makes him look like a prize-fighter," cried Josephine.
"They've no right to print his picture at all; it'll do the boy a serious injury by leading him to believe there is nothing else in the world worth thinking about but foot-ball," I asserted. "What right have they to do it?"
"Pooh, Cousin Fred," said Sam. "It's nothing but ordinary newspaper enterprise. They print everybody's portrait nowadays, from the common murderer up. Your ox is gored this time, that's all. Cheer up, old man--Rah! rah! rah! Harvard!"
"I never supposed they would make him look like that, or I wouldn't have let Fred have the photograph to give them," said Josephine, forlornly.
"Do you mean that you gave it to them?" I asked, in horror.
"It was to Fred I gave it. He said that his picture was to appear with the others, and that he must have a photograph. But they have made him much the worst looking of them all. It's a libel on the dear boy."
I was saved from intemperate language by the sudden advent of Mrs. Guy Sloane, in whose custody appeared the Rev. Bradley Mason, our spiritual adviser. They were both breathless with haste, occasioned, as we shortly learned, by the necessity imposed on our beloved pastor of marrying a couple before he could escape from his fold.
"If I had ever dreamed that you would come, Mr. Mason, I should have sent you an invitation myself," said Josephine, whose delight, as I perceived, was tinged with jealousy.
"I planned it as a delirious surprise," interjected Mrs. Sloane. "I knew you would be only too glad to have him if there was room. I dare say you thought I was a little mysterious over the telephone last night, Mr. Bangs," she added with a blithe twist of her neck in Sam's direction.
"I am a thorough believer in the efficacy of manly sports on character," I heard Mr. Mason remark to my wife. "They cannot be too much encouraged by us all."
"It is very kind of you to say so," said Josephine, with a radiance which told me plainly that her qualms concerning the whole proceeding as an educational factor were at least temporarily dispelled. "I shall tell little Fred that you were with us. It will gratify him very much to know that you saw the game."
"It must be a proud day for you as a father and a college man," he continued, with a kindly smile in my direction.
"Really, sir, I am not altogether certain yet," I answered, a trifle doggedly. "My judgment is in a state of suspension."
He obviously mistook my philosophic utterance for fears concerning the outcome of the game, inasmuch as he presently sought to soothe me by a speech to the effect that a game well lost was a victory in ethics, which prompted me to remark, under my breath:
"Provided it doesn't cost a leg or a rib or two."
"Cost nothing," cried the irrepressible Sam, whose ear caught what I had meant for an aside. "He'll come out of it all right, Cousin Fred. We're bound to win too. Rah! rah! rah! Harv-a-rd!" Thereupon the engine gave a puff and a couple of snorts, and we were off. _