representative having decided to drop out. Merton was nervous, and
Slade was determined to win. Both played as they had never played
before, but Slade’s service, which was his strong point, was nothing
after the one to which Grace had accustomed Merton. And in spite
of Slade’s most strenuous efforts the games kept coming slowly and
slightly in Merton’s favor.
They were two sets all and were beginning the final set, when Barnes
arose and disappeared in the crowd. But those of the quartette who were
left made noise enough to keep Merton playing his best. It became a
more and more bitter fight as the end drew near. Grace was so excited
that not even his sprained ankle could keep him quiet, and Thatcher had
great difficulty in restraining a desire to shout. At last Merton got
“’vantage,” with only one point to win, but he missed the next ball
and back went the score to “deuce” again. Three times this happened,
and three times the college men half rose from the ground expecting to
cheer, and then sank back again. “If he does that again,” said Grace,
“I’ll have nervous prostration!” But he didn’t do it again. He smashed
the next ball back into Slade’s court far out of his way, and then
pulled down his sleeves as unconcernedly as if he had been playing a
practice game.
The next moment Prior and the others had lifted him up on their
shoulders, and were tramping around the field with him shouting,
“What’s the matter with Malvern?” and “We _are_ the people!” and many
other such highly ridiculous and picturesque cries of victory.
And then there came a shout from the entrance to the grounds, and
up the carriageway rode Barnes mounted on top of an old-fashioned,
yellow-bodied stage-coach that he had found in some Hilltown
livery-stable and decorated from top to bottom with the Malvern colors.
He had four horses in hand, and he was waving his whip and shouting as
if a pack of wolves or Indians were in close pursuit.
The boys clambered up on top of the coach and began blowing the horns
and affixing the new brooms that Barnes had thoughtfully furnished for
them. They were in such a hurry to start that they forgot the prizes;
and if Grace had not reminded the boys, they would have gone home
content without the tokens of victory.
The faces of Mr. Percy Clay and the other contributors to the silver
cups when they saw the prizes handed up to that “Malvern gang,” as they
now called them, were most pitiful.
“Fancy our giving two hundred dollars extra for those cups, and then
having them go to Malvern!” groaned Mr. Clay.
The boys took the prizes without remark, and had the courtesy not to
open the boxes in which the cups reposed on blue velvet until they were
out of sight of the men who had lost them with such bad grace.
But when once they were on the road, with the wind whistling around
their hats and the trees meeting over their heads and the sun smiling
its congratulations as it sank for the night, they examined the cups,
and Grace said he had never seen any handsomer.
It really seemed as if the ten miles was covered in as many minutes,
and though dogs ran out and barked at them, and the people in the
fields stared at them as if they thought they were crazy, and although
Barnes insisted on driving over every stone he could find and almost
upsetting them, they kept up their spirits and shouted and sang the
whole way.
The engineer of the train that had taken them up saw the coach on his
return trip bounding through the shady high road where it ran parallel
with his track, and told the operator at Malvern that “those boys were
coming back on top of a circus band-wagon.”
And the people of Malvern were ready to receive them, though they were
still ignorant of the second victory. The young people lined the high
road for a distance beyond the town, and the boys saw them from afar,
seated on the fence-rails and in carts and wagons. The other members of
the club saw the stage, also, for one of the boys had been up in a tree
on the lookout for the last half-hour. And they waved the club colors
and all the flags they had been able to get at such short notice; but
it was not until three of the Big Four stood up on top of the coach
at the risk of breaking their necks, and held up the cups and waved
them around their heads until they flashed like mirrors, that the club
really cheered. And when they saw that there were THREE cups they set
up such a hurrah that the cows in the next field tore madly off in a
stampede. That night everybody in town came to Dr. Merton’s with the
village band and thronged the big lawn; and Merton made a speech in
which he spoke very highly of Prior, and of the Big Four who had helped
to save the day, and of Thatcher, but most of all of Grace.
Then Grace had to speak leaning on his crutches; and the band played
and the college boys sang and everybody handled the prizes and admired
them even to the champions’ satisfaction.
The next day Grace bade his new friends good by and went back to
college, where his absence was attributed to his sprained ankle. He
thought of the people of Malvern very often, of the twilight evenings
spent on Dr. Merton’s lawn listening to the college boys’ singing, and
talking to the girls of the Malvern Tennis Club, and of the glorious
victory of his pupils and the friendliness and kindness of his hosts.
He knew he would never forget them, but he hardly thought they would
long remember him.
But, two weeks later, the expressman brought a big box with a smaller
black one inside of it; and within, resting on its blue velvet bed, was
a facsimile of the prize-cup of the tri-club tournament. And it was
marked, “To Charles Coleridge Grace. From the people of Malvern.”
And when Grace exhibits the many prizes he has won, they say that it is
this cup which he did _not_ win that he handles most tenderly and shows
with the greatest pride.
THE JUMP AT COREY’S SLIP.
The jump from Corey’s slip was never made but by two of the Brick Dust
Gang, and though, as it turned out, they were not sorry they had taken
it, they served as a warning to all the others of the gang against
trying to emulate their daring.
Corey’s slip, as everybody knows, is part of Corey’s brick-yard, on the
East side, near the Twenty-sixth street wharf, and the Brick Dust Gang
are so called because they have a hidden meeting-place among the high
piles of bricks which none of the other boys, nor the police, nor even
the employees of the brick-yard have been able to find. It is known to
exist, though, and the gang meet there to smoke and play the accordion
and gamble for cigarette pictures, and to pursue such other sinful and
demoralizing practices of East side youth as they elect.
The Brick Dust Gang must not be confounded with the Rag Gang of “The
Bay,” near Thirty-third street, for, while the Rag Gang are thieves
and toughs, the Brick Dust Gang are too young to be very wicked, and
their “folks” are too respectable to let them go very far astray. The
gang got along very well during the winter months, and the hole in the
bricks was filled every afternoon after the public schools had closed,
with from a dozen to twenty of them.
Buck Mooney was the leader, and no one disputed his claim, for he was
a born leader in some respects, just as was his father, who could
throw the votes of the Luke J. Mooney Star Social Club wherever they
would do himself and the party the most good. But his son Buck was
quick-tempered and stronger than he knew, and he had a way of knocking
the younger and less pugilistic members of his crowd around which was
injudicious; for by this he hurt his own popularity as well as their
heads.
He was no bully though, and there was no one who could lead him in any
show of physical prowess recognized and practised by the gang. So all
through the winter he was easily the leader, and no one stood against
him. His fall came in the spring. The coming of the spring meant more
to the Brick Dust Gang than to almost any other crowd along the river
front, for their knowledge of the brick-yard and its wharf enabled them
to bathe in the river quite hidden from the police at any hour of the
day, and this means a great deal to those who have felt the stifling
heat of the tenements along the East River.
They bathed and swam and dived from the first of May until the autumn
came and gave the water such a sharpness that they left it numbed and
with chattering teeth, and they began at five in the morning and kept
it up late into the night. They lived in the water, and were rather
more at home in it than they were on the streets. The workmen in the
brick-yard never interfered with them, because the boys helped them in
piling the bricks and in unloading the scows and loading the carts; and
the police could never catch them, for the reason that the boys always
kept a part of the gang posted as sentinels in the yard.
Mooney and Tommy Grant were easily the best swimmers in the crowd.
Tommy was four years younger than the leader, and small and
consumptive-looking; but he was absurdly strong for his size, and his
body was as hard and muscular as a jockey’s. The trouble began between
the two at the swimming-match at Harlem for all comers, where they both
entered for the one-mile race with a turn. The Harlem boys were not in
it from the first, and the two down-town boys led all the others by a
hundred yards. “The little fellow,” as Tommy was called by the crowds
on the shore, was the popular favorite; and the crowd was delighted
when he came plunging in ahead, swimming so much under water that only
one bare shoulder and revolving arm told where he was.
Buck Mooney, the leader of the gang, was a bad second and a bad loser
as well. He swore a great deal when his backers pulled him out of the
water, and gave every reason for Tommy’s success, except that Tommy
could swim faster than he could.
When Tommy appeared around the streets the next day with the big gold
medal on his coat, and with the words “Champion of the East River”
blazoned on it, Mooney felt worse than ever, and grew so ugly over it
that some of the gang soon turned against him, and his hold over them
disappeared. Little Tommy took his place without any formal election,
and Mooney sulked and said unpleasant things about him behind his back.
They never came to blows, but they both grew to hate each other
cordially,--principally through the stories their friends told of each
to the other, as friends, true friends, are found to do, in all classes
of society. So the breach grew very great and the gang was divided and
lost its influence. One faction would refuse to act as sentinel for the
other, and each claimed the meeting-place. On the whole, it was very
unpleasant, and most unsatisfactory to those who loved peace.
It was evident that something must be done; either the gang must
separate into two crowds or reunite again under one leader. It was a
foolish, dare-devil young Irish boy that suggested how this last and
much-desired result could be accomplished. There was a big derrick at
the end of the wharf to lift the buckets of coal from the scows, when
the place was used for a coal-yard.
Some of the more daring boys had jumped from the middle bar of this
derrick, in emulation of Steve Brodie, whose jump from the Brooklyn
Bridge and subsequent elevation to the proprietorship of a saloon had
stirred up every boy in the East side. It was a dangerous thing to do,
because there was an outer row of posts beyond the slip, and whoever
jumped had to jump out far enough to strike the water beyond them. For,
if he should not jump far enough--
What the Irish boy proposed was that some one should try to dive--not
jump--from the very top of the derrick. The derrick was fifty feet
above the water, and the outer line of posts was eight feet from the
slip and fifteen feet from the line of the derrick. It looked like just
what it was--an impossibility--for any one but the coolest and most
practised diver.
“If a lad should do it,” objected one of the gang, “and ’ud hit them
piles, there’d be no getting at him quick e’cept from the top of the
derrick. He’d sink afore any one could get around the piles to him from
the slip.”
“There’d be no need to hurry,” said another, grimly. “He’d keep till
the police boat picked him up.”
“Well, the morgue’s handy,” commented another, flippantly, with a nod
of his head toward Bellevue Hospital, back of them.
As ill luck would have it, Mooney came up just then, and they told him
what they were discussing.
“I’ll bet Tommy Grant wouldn’t be afeard to try it,” said one of the
youngest.
That was enough for Mr. Mooney. He said with a sneer that Tommy _would_
be afraid, and of course Tommy was told of this at once, and Tommy,
after a careful survey of the jump, said it was suicide. And then
Mooney called him a coward, and said he’d do it, and he’d show him who
was fit to lead the gang.
The elder boys told him not to be a fool, Tommy among the number; but
he said they were cry-babies, and told them to keep quiet about it and
to meet at the wharf at seven that evening.
The tide was low then, and the piles showed high above the water. At
high tide they were covered, and besides there were very few people
about at that hour.
At seven o’clock twenty of them gathered at the end of the wharf. They
were badly scared and wished they were well out of it, but there was no
stopping Mooney. The more they begged him not to do it, the more he
laughed at them. He climbed the ladder to the top of the derrick alone,
and stripped off every thread but his swimming tights and the scapular
around his neck. The big posts rose out of the water in front of the
slip--black, slimy-looking, and as pitiless as rocks.
Van Bibber and some of his friends in their steam yacht lying at anchor
off the New York Yacht Club’s wharf saw the boy mounting the ladder and
shouted to the other boys to stop him. The other boys would have liked
to do what the gentlemen suggested, but it was too late. But Tommy ran
half-way up the ladder, begging his rival to come down. Mooney swore at
him to go back, and Tommy hung there half-way up and fearful to do more
lest he should rattle the ex-leader of the gang.
The gentlemen on the yacht told two of the crew to jump into the
rowboat and pick the young fool up, and the sailors ran to cast off the
skiff.
Then they saw Mooney outlined against the dark background of the
tenements, as motionless as a marble statue on a high pedestal.
He raised his arms slowly over his head until the finger tips met and
interlaced, then he bent his knees and his body swung forward. There
was a brief, breathless silence as he dived out and down, and then
a yell from the yacht and a gasping cry from the boys, as they saw
him throw out his hands wildly to save himself, and saw that he had
misjudged the distance and would strike the posts. Some of the youngest
boys turned sick and sank whimpering to their knees, and six of the
older ones dived like one man into the water to pull him out. He had
struck the posts with his arm, had turned, striking them again, and
then sank without a cry into the river.
The sailors in the rowboat had just started toward the spot and the
club men were cursing them for their slowness. The six boys in the
water were shut off from Mooney by the posts, and slipped back after
they had tried vainly to climb over them.
“He’s killed. He’ll be drowned. Ah, he’s sunk for good,” the boys
wailed and cried in chorus.
Young Tommy from his post half-way up the ladder, saw that before the
boat could reach his rival, or the boys could get around the piles
to him, he would be drowned, and so he ran up the rest of the ladder,
poised for just a second, and then took the second and last jump that
was ever taken from Corey’s slip. He cleared the posts by an inch or
two, turned in the water before he had gone half-way into it, and dived
to where he saw the white body settling towards the bottom.
The sailors in the rowboat reached him in time to pull him out and
carry him to the yacht with the bruised and unconscious body of his
rival in his arms. Then the gentlemen sent Mooney over to the hospital,
and wanted to make up a purse for Tommy, but he said it was “all right”
and “hadn’t done nothin’ anyhow.” It took several weeks for Mooney’s
leg and arm to knit, and he limped for months afterward.
The gentlemen on the yacht wanted to compromise by giving Tommy a
medal, but he said he’d had enough trouble over the last medal, and
asked why they did not give it to Mooney, for he had taken the jump in
cold blood; “an’ I,” said Tommy, “just did it because I was in a hurry
to get down.”
So Van Bibber and the other yachtsmen gave Mooney a very fine medal,
which told that he was the “Champion Diver of the East River.” And now
there are two leaders to the gang, though each protests that the other
is the only one.
THE VAN BIBBER BASEBALL CLUB.
Young Van Bibber decided that he ought to take some people to the
circus. He had long outgrown the age when the circus only pleased, but
some of the men had said it was the thing to do just as it was the
thing to go incognito to see Carmencita dance; and so he purchased a
big box in the very centre of the lowest tier and wrote to Mrs. Dick
Wassails that it was at her service and that she could fill it with
whom she pleased. He added that he would expect them to take supper
with him later.
He owed Mrs. Dick, as everybody called her, a great deal for many
social favors, and he thought to make things even in this way; but Mrs.
Dick was engaged for that evening, and said she was so sorry and begged
to be excused. So young Van Bibber sent off a note to the Gramercys,
with whom he wished to become more intimate, and whom he wished to put
under an obligation. But they were just going abroad and were in the
midst of preparations and they also begged to be excused.
It was getting very near the night now, and Van Bibber ran over in his
mind the names of all of those people to whom he owed something or who
might some day do something for him. He tried the Van Warps, because
they owned a yacht, but they were going to a wedding; and he tried the
Van Blunts, on account of their house at Lenox, and found that their
great uncle had just died and that they were going to the funeral. Then
he asked the men in the club, but the one who gave such good dinners
thought it would be too much of a bore; and another, whose sister Van
Bibber wanted to know better, said he was afraid he would catch cold,
and others, all of whom had been civil to him in one way or another,
began to make excuses. So young Van Bibber stood on the steps of the
club and kicked viciously at the mat. He decided that his friends were
a very poor lot. “One would think I was trying to borrow money from
them,” soliloquized Van Bibber.
“Where to?” asked the driver of the hansom.
“To the circus,” said Van Bibber. It was a long ride, and he had
time to make up his mind that he had been foolish in starting out;
but as he was already more than half-way there he kept on. He had
determined to see that circus himself in solitary state from that box,
notwithstanding his irresponsive friends.
But at the entrance to the circus three small boys, in every way
representatives of the coming “tough,” waylaid him for ten cents to get
into the side show--only ten cents, that was all they wanted. They did
not aspire to such a pinnacle of happiness as the circus itself. But
Young Van Bibber saw a way to use his box and to show his smart friends
how somebody, at least, appreciated his invitations.
“Go get three more boys like you,” he said; “dirty boys that haven’t
seen the circus, and I’ll take you in.”
The three youths looked at him uncertainly for a moment.
“Ah, he’s kiddin’ us,” said one of them, doubtfully.
But there was such an innocent and embarrassed expression on young Van
Bibber’s face that they concluded he must mean it.
“Besides,” said one of them, “don’t you’se see he’s a priest? He
wouldn’t tell no lies.”
Van Bibber for the first time became conscious of his white lawn tie
and his long cape-cloak.
“Priests don’t go to circuses,” suggested one of the trio.
“Are you going to get those other boys or not?” asked Van Bibber,
impatiently. It really seemed as if nobody was willing to go with him.
But there was over a dozen boys about him by this time, and he picked
out three of the smallest and raggedest. Then he shoved them all into
the circus before him like so many chickens and saw, without caring,
that the men by the door were laughing at him.
The boys raced about at first and yelled to each other to come see this
animal, and to watch that one shaking the bars. Van Bibber wandered
around after them. They seemed to be having a very good time, and he
felt a queer sensation of satisfaction in some one else’s pleasure
which was oddly pleasing. Then they flocked back to him again and
informed him it was time to “get into the show part,” and so he led
them, to the grave disgust of the attendants, to the principal box in
the place.
“My eyes! but I wish de boys could see me now,” said one of them, pride
and happiness beaming from every feature of his face. “I guess this is
old man Barnum’s box, for sure.”
Van Bibber sat in the back of the box. He didn’t mind how the people
around them smiled. He felt himself very far above them, and in a
position to do as many eccentric things as he pleased. And he found
himself enjoying the show and the friendly interest his guests took
in him, and in their fear lest he couldn’t see everything, or that he
might miss what the clowns said.
He stopped the man who sold peanuts and candies, and distributed them
lavishly. It was cheaper by far than a Delmonico supper, and he enjoyed
seeing the half-famished way in which the young rascals fell upon the
supplies and stowed them away. They were really very noisy and wildly
excited, but he didn’t care. He never remembered having given anybody
so much extreme pleasure before in his life.
When it was all over and the big spectacular show that had held them
breathless had ended, he fought his way out to the waiting hansom, very
well pleased with the night’s experience. But before he got away his
guests crowded around him at the door, and one of them, who, as they
had privately informed him, was no less distinguished an individual
than the captain of Open Lots Baseball Club, of which they were all
members, thanked him very civilly and asked him his name. He gave the
captain his card with grave politeness and shook hands with all of
them with equal solemnity, and then drove down town and had a solitary
supper. On the whole, he concluded that though he had made nothing by
it, he had not wasted the box, and he went to bed satisfied.
And two days later he received in a very dirty envelope the following
epistle:
DEAR SIR--At a meeting of the Open Lots Baseball Club it was voted,
on account of your kindness, to change the name to the Courtland Van
Bibber Baseball Club, which it is now, as a mark of our apreshun of
your kindness. Truly yours,
TERENCE FAHEY MCGLOIN,
_Capt. C. Van. B. B. B. C._
“So,” said Van Bibber, as he put the letter carefully away, “It pays to
go out into the highways, after all.”
THE STORY OF A JOCKEY.
Young Charley Chadwick had been brought up on his father’s farm in New
Jersey. The farm had been his father’s before his father died, and was
still called Chadwick’s Meadows in his memory. It was a very small
farm, and for the most part covered with clover and long, rich grass,
that were good for pasturing, and nothing else. Charley was too young,
and Mrs. Chadwick was too much of a housekeeper and not enough of a
farmer’s wife, to make the most out of the farm, and so she let the
meadows to the manager of the Cloverdale Stock Farm. This farm is only
half a mile back from the Monmouth Park race track at Long Branch.
The manager put a number of young colts in it to pasture, and took what
grass they did not eat to the farm. Charley used to ride these colts
back to the big stables at night, and soon grew to ride very well, and
to know a great deal about horses and horse breeding and horse racing.
Sometimes they gave him a mount at the stables, and he was permitted to
ride one of the race horses around the private track, while the owner
took the time from the judges’ stand.