REMSEN’S PLEDGE
The tiny hall in Society House was crowded when Wayne and Don entered
at a little before eight. All the candidates for the track team, the
crew, the football team, and the baseball nine were there, and a group
of five graduates were talking together by the stage. At the latter
Wayne looked with some curiosity. Gardiner topped them all by half
a head. Kirk, the old baseball player, looked like a pygmy beside
him. Don pointed out the others: Barret, the renowned hurdler; Burns,
once a famous sprinter; and Kenyon, holder of the intercollegiate
two-hundred-and-twenty-yard record. Paddy joined them and the three
found seats near the front. Then Dave entered and squeezed into a
three-inch space between Wayne and Paddy.
“How’d they go, Dave?” asked Don.
“Rotten; I can’t throw a hammer. I used to think I could, but----” He
shook his head sadly.
“Go on wid yer,” said Paddy. “Yez kin bate thim all if yez ’ud only
think so.--But what in the name of goodness was the matter with you
to-day?” he asked, turning to Wayne. Wayne smiled cheerfully and shook
his head.
“Blest if I know, Paddy. I guess I’m like Dave; I used to think I
could run, but----” He shook his head in mimicry of Dave and wiped an
imaginary tear from his eye.
“Well, you’re all a sorry lot,” said Paddy in disgust. “All except
Don, and he can’t help winning, hang him!” Further compliments were
interrupted by the appearance of Professor Beck and the former football
coach, Stephen Remsen. Paddy jumped to his feet.
“Now then, fellows,” he cried, facing the hall, “three times three for
Remsen!” The cheers were given with a will and the recipient bowed his
thanks smilingly. Then Professor Beck took the platform, and, after a
few words of criticism on the day’s events, read the training table
list. Sixteen fellows were selected to go to “Mother” Burke’s in the
village, and twelve were named for a table in the school dining room.
Wayne’s name was on neither list and he shot an inquiring glance at
Don. The latter whispered:
“It’s all right. You’ll go to table later.”
Two of the graduates, fine, healthy-looking men, took their turns
after the professor and pointed out some defects in the afternoon’s
performances, spoke encouragingly to the fellows, and were cheered as
they took their seats. Then Remsen arose and the little audience became
on the instant as quiet as though made up of so many wax figures.
Remsen was more than a Hillton graduate, more than a successful
coach; he was a sort of school deity whom successive classes had long
worshiped. In his school days he had been stroke in a winning crew, had
excelled with the weights, and had been captain of the football eleven
when it had devastated the surrounding country of laurels. These things
are enough to place a man’s name high on the roster of fame and to earn
him gratitude. But besides this Remsen had been football coach for
three years, during which time the team had won two victories from and
played a tie with St. Eustace; and always, ever since his graduation,
he had labored unceasingly for the school and had done more than any
other individual toward establishing its athletics on a firm, stable,
and honest basis.
In appearance he was about thirty years of age, and “football man”
was stamped all over his well-built frame. He was the kind of man for
whom one would have predicted success in whatever undertaking he had
entered. His face was handsome and manly; his eyes gray and clear; and
his smile worth seeing. Hillton was proud of him, from its principal to
its smallest junior, and he was proud of Hillton. When the fellows had
stopped clapping he began to speak.
“I’ve been asked by your principal to say a few words to you this
evening. I make this statement before I begin, so that if I bore you,
you will know where to lay the blame. Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Barret have
told you some things that it will be worth your while to remember and
to profit by; because they know just what they are talking about.
But if I undertook to criticise what I saw this afternoon--aside from
the work of the fellows who scattered the hammers and shots around--I
should be out of my depth; I wouldn’t know a hurdle from a stop-watch
if I met them together. What little I know about weights I am willing
to talk about. But I’ll do that to-morrow, when I hope to meet the
weight men on the campus. And as to football, why, if there is anything
that Mr. Gardiner has forgotten to say I’ll be glad to say it before I
leave.
“To-night I should like to say a few words about training and athletics
in general. I am glad to see so much interest displayed in the
approaching interscholastic meeting. I hope we’ll win it. We’ve lost
it with good grace for two years past; I think we could win it with
even better grace. But if we don’t come out on top this spring, why,
I’m sure that we can give the other schools some points in the art of
losing. It’s a great thing to be able to lose well; much greater than
being able to win well. I think we do both well here at Hillton, but
there may be room for improvement; there usually is everywhere. It’s
fine to win. I’d rather win any day than to lose. But I don’t always
manage it. And it’s got to be the same way with a track team or a
football eleven or a crew. Sometimes it has got to come in second;
perhaps third. If no crew was willing to accept second place there
wouldn’t be any races, and soon there wouldn’t be any crews.
“I have a youngster at home; he isn’t very big yet--just put on his
first pair of trousers the other day--but he looks a good deal like a
football man already. Some day I expect he’ll come here to school. If
he does I hope he will row on the crew and play on the eleven or the
nine, and, if he can, run well or leap the hurdles. But if I had my way
I’d fix his victories and defeats for him in about a proportion of one
victory to nine defeats. For it isn’t winning that helps a fellow get a
good hard grip on the world, but losing. Yes, fellows, a boy or a man
will learn more wisdom--good, useful, every-day wisdom--in one defeat
than he will in nine victories. It would be a hard course for Remsen,
Jr., but it would make a better man out of him in the end than would a
whole eight years of first prizes. So don’t despise defeat, as long as
it is honorable. Learn to make the most of it. Don’t feel down-hearted
for more than two minutes and a half; that’s quite long enough for
regrets. Cheer the victors, and go back and try again. Don’t blame the
other man because he won--it was probably your own fault; but shake
hands with him and, if you must, tell him to look out for his laurels
next time. Defeat ought to teach us courage, perseverance, manliness,
good temper, and self-possession--all good things to learn. As I look
back on my school and college days I can remember occasions when I won
bigger victories through defeat than when I rowed in a winning crew or
played on a winning team.
“But that’s enough about losing. You’ll think that I’m a bird of ill
omen, I’m afraid. So let’s talk about something else. I wonder how many
of you fellows realize the fact that all the hard work and training you
have gone through with and are still undergoing is not, after all, a
preparation toward winning a track meeting or a boat race? Did you ever
stop to ask yourselves what the right aim of athletics is--what the
chief aim should be? Some of you will answer: ‘That’s easy; the chief
aim of athletics is winning.’ Wrong; the true aim of all athletics,
the world around, is physical culture. Winning is of small importance;
contests are only incentives. We go in for athletics because we wish
to attain to a condition of physical fitness that will allow us to
make the most of our lives. Athletics without training is useless; it
will accomplish almost nothing good. I use the word training here in
its fullest meaning: moderation in diet and exercise, temperance and
regularity in daily life, cleanliness and self-restraint. We train in
order that the actual athletics will benefit us. I might go through
the most approved course of chest-weight and dumb-bell exercise, but
if, as soon as it was over, I went to the table and stuffed my stomach
full of indigestible food, drank a lot of liquor, smoked a lot of
cigarettes or cigars, stayed up every night until one or two o’clock,
took no outdoor exercise and breathed impure air all day, why, I might
as well let the chest weights alone so far as any benefit is concerned.
Athletics require training, whether we are going to compete in sports
or not; and training means power to perform hard tasks with a modicum
of fatigue and often with enjoyment; it enables the body to endure
hardships, heat, cold, or fasting, without becoming endangered, and it
clears the cobwebs out of the brain.
“Unusual strains without previous preparation will often prove
injurious. Training prepares us for those strains; our ability to meet
them increases as the training advances. The best training is that
which trains all parts of the body in unison. Don’t allow your exercise
to develop one physical portion of your body at the cost of any other;
because you are going to throw weights don’t neglect your leg muscles;
because you are going to try for the one-hundred-yard dash don’t
neglect your arms. In short, avoid becoming a ‘specialist’ as much as
possible. Keep in mind the fact that general health and not success at
one feat is the end of athletic training.
“I’m doing a good deal more talking than I intended to, and I dare say
I’m boring you badly, just as I feared I should. But there is one more
thing that I want to touch on while I’ve got you where you can’t get
away, and that----”
“Go on! We like it!” shouted a boy at the back of the room; and the
audience clapped and laughed its approval.
“Well, that’s very good of you,” Remsen continued smilingly. “But I’m
about through. If I was--well, a kind of athletic dictator in this
country, I should require from every fellow a verbal signature to
this pledge: ‘I will always play fair!’ It isn’t a very long pledge,
but it means a good deal, as you will see if you’ll consider it. If
every schoolboy, whether an athlete or a grind, and every college man
would sign it and stick to it, we’d never hear of one school’s having
‘severed athletic relations’ with another; there’d be no brawling
in football games, and we’d never see the charge of professionalism
brought against a college. And it is a pledge that we need not leave
behind us when we graduate; it’s a good pledge to stick to right
through life.
“I have no fault to find with Hillton athletes on the score of
unfairness. I earnestly believe that athletics are pure here; but I’m
not going to assume any ‘holier than thou’ attitude; and I hope you
won’t. Let us keep them as pure as we can and give an unobtrusive
lesson to other schools--yes, and colleges. That’s all I’ve got to say,
fellows. I thank you for listening so kindly.”
Ere the cheer had started Don was on his feet.
“Mr. Remsen,” he cried, “won’t you put that pledge to us? I’m sure
every fellow here will sign it gladly.”
A chorus of assent arose and much clapping. Remsen turned back to the
audience and held up his hand.
“You’ve heard what Cunningham has said. Nothing would please me more
than to have you all accept that pledge. Shall I put it to you?”
One deep, hearty “Yes” swept through the room.
“Very well. Suppose you take the pledge by rising. If there are any
here who for any reason prefer not to pledge themselves I hope they
will keep their seats without any embarrassment. There may be some here
to-night who are so certain of their ability to always act rightly that
they will not deem a pledge necessary. I shall think no less of those
who decline to go through the form.”
The speaker paused and looked about the hall, a smiling brightness in
his gray eyes.
“Then after me, fellows, and rise. ‘I will always play fair.’”
“I will always play fair.” The response was earnest and hearty, and
before the last word had died away every person in the hall was on his
feet--graduates, Professor Beck, and all; not a person remained seated.
Stephen Remsen looked for a moment into the dozens of earnest faces
before him. Then: “God send we can keep that pledge!” he said soberly.
Whereupon “Pigeon” Wallace leaped on to a chair and the cheering began.