I
We had beaten Yale hands-down the year before, and this year, when we
started practice, we had eight out of eleven of last season’s men, and
in spite of the fact that they had instituted a new system over in New
Haven, had a new coach at the helm and were reported to have the best
material in years, we couldn’t see how the Elis had even a show-in.
There was nothing to it, any way you figured it. We weren’t even going
to miss the three we had lost, for we had at least two good candidates
for each of them. There wasn’t anything could stop us from winning the
Eastern Championship again. That’s the way it was right up to the first
week in October. Then things began to happen.
I guess we established the hard-luck record that Fall. Kendall went
first. He was left tackle, and a corker. He fell down in exams. Then
Penniwell, first-string quarter, got hurt in the Bates game and
developed water on the knee. Next Hanson, fullback, pulled a tendon
in practice. Of course, he would be out only a couple of weeks, but on
top of everything else it made us feel a bit sick. It reminded one of
the nursery rhyme of the Ten Little Indians. “One got charley-horse and
then there were nine.” Only it didn’t stop at nine, not by a long shot.
Stearns, our best halfback, fell down three dinky steps coming out of a
recitation hall and broke an arm. Joe Leverett said he hoped it would
be a warning to him and teach him to keep away from recitations. You’d
think we’d about reached the limit then, wouldn’t you? We thought so,
anyway. We tackled Amherst with just four of last year’s team in the
line-up and barely escaped a licking. The Amherst game was the third on
the schedule, and after that we had the big teams to meet. Of course by
that time some of the earlier invalids were getting back into shape,
and we figured that if we could stall through the next two games we’d
be in pretty good shape for Princeton and Yale. But Fate wasn’t through
with us. On the Tuesday following the Amherst scare they hurried Tom
Shawl off to the Infirmary at eleven in the morning and operated on
him for appendicitis at four P. M. Good-night!
Of course you remember Shawl, all-America halfback two years running,
the hardest line plunger in the country and a wizard at kicking. One of
the New York papers the year before said that “yesterday, at New Haven,
Tom Shawl, assisted by the Harvard eleven, defeated Yale 17 to 0.” The
paper wasn’t so far off, either. Anyway, you can imagine what it meant
to us to lose Shawl. There was some vague talk of his getting around
in time to play against Yale, but no one believed in it. We just about
threw up our hands then. I’ll never forget the conference we had in
Pete Haskell’s room that evening. I was manager that year. There were
five of us there: the Head Coach, Porter; Jewell, who had the linemen
in charge; the trainer; Pete and myself. We were a sick and sober lot,
I can tell you. We talked and talked and snarled at each other for two
solid hours and nothing much came of it. The only thing we decided was
that Hackett, right end, would have to go into the backfield. He had
played half before they’d made an end of him, and he was a good one.
But that meant we’d have to find a corking good man for right end, and
there wasn’t one in sight. There were plenty of candidates, but not one
showed the real stuff. We talked them all over. Finally Jewell said:
“Where’s that chap Perrin, who played left end on the Freshman team
last Fall? Isn’t he back this year?”
Porter sat up. “He’s our man!” he cried. “He will have to come out!”
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Jewell.
“Folks won’t let him play,” said Pete. “He got hurt in the Yale
Freshman game last year. It wasn’t anything serious, but his folks got
scared, I guess.”
“Piffle!” said Jewell. “Get him out. We need him.”
“I’ll see him to-morrow,” said Porter. “Glad you thought of him, Walt.”
We talked some more, and about ten o’clock life looked a bit brighter.
With Perrin at right end and Hackett at left half, we might get by. Of
course, losing Shawl’s goal-kicking meant that we’d have to reorganize
the whole campaign against Yale, and that there was just about three
months of hard work to do in six weeks, but we were all a bit more
hopeful when we said good-night. I stayed behind after the others went.
Billy Sawyer, who roomed with Pete and played fullback on the Second,
came in just then and we three chewed it all over again. Billy shook
his head over Perrin, though.
“You won’t get him,” he said. “I know him pretty well. We were at
Milton together. He’s that sort.”
“What sort?” I asked.
“Well, the sort who keeps a promise.”
“You mean he promised his folks not to play?”
“Yep. He broke a bone in his hand last year in the game with the Yale
freshies and his parents got cold feet. He told me about it. Said he’d
promised to keep out of it. Sort of broke up, too, he was. Too bad, for
you know the sort of a game he put up last Fall.”
We nodded gloomily.
“Still,” said I, “he might get his folks to let him off.”
Billy screwed his mouth up and shook his head.
“Don’t think so. He’s that sort, you see.”
“Bother your ‘sorts’! When Porter tells him we need him like everything
and reads the riot act to him I’ll bet he will squirm out of it
somehow. You’ll see. Besides, a fellow’s parents haven’t any right to
keep a chap off the team when――when the college simply has to have him!”
“Oh, rot!” said Billy. “Parents aren’t bothering about who wins the
Yale game, Gus. Besides, they have got some rights, say what you want.
My dad’s paying a good stiff price to get me an education and if he
told me I must quit playing football I’d do it. So would you. So would
any fellow.”
“Maybe, Billy, but any sensible parent wouldn’t do it!”
“Why not? What’s the sense of spending a pile of money on a chap if
he’s going to break his neck or come out of college with two or three
important bones missing just where they’ll show the most? No, Bob,
Perrin’s folks have got the right idea. Merely as an investment――――”
“Money isn’t everything,” I said. “There’s such a thing as loyalty and
duty to your college, Billy.”
“You’re talking about Bob; I’m talking about his folks. They don’t owe
any duty to your old college, do they?”
“Just the same――――”
“Oh, forget it,” said Pete. “Get out of here, Gus. I’m going to bed.
It’s up to Porter, anyway. I hope he gets him, that’s all.”
“So do I,” said Billy, “but he won’t.”
And he didn’t. Perrin was awfully sorry about it, but he had made a
promise to his parents and he meant to keep it. Porter told him he’d
have to get his parents to let him off. Perrin said he wouldn’t ask it;
said it wouldn’t be fair. Porter raved at him and pleaded, but Perrin
just kept on saying how badly he felt about it and how much he would
like to play, but――――
Porter was sore that afternoon. “He’s a mule,” he said. “A stubborn
mule.”
“So we don’t get him?” asked the trainer.
Porter closed his eyes in a way he had and set his mouth. “We get
him, all right,” he answered grimly. “We’ve simply got to have him.
Someone’s got to go and read the riot act to those folks of his. They
live in Mearsville. Who knows him? Do you, Pete?”
Pete shook his head. “Only to speak to. Billy Sawyer does, though. He
went to prep with him.”
“Sawyer of the Second?” asked the coach. “He’ll do. You take Sawyer
and Gus to-morrow and go out to Mearsville and see them, Pete. I’d go
myself, but with all this mix-up on my hands I can’t miss practice.
I’ll see Wynant and get him to let Sawyer off. You have a car, haven’t
you?”
“Yes. How far is Mearsville, and where is it?”
“Oh, about a hundred miles; out beyond Worcester somewhere. Look it
up on the map. It’s a small place, and you’ll have no trouble finding
them, I guess. Come around to-night, the three of you, and we’ll dope
out a line of talk. Don’t let Perrin hear about it, though. He might
try to queer us. He’s a mule.”
We left the Square the next day right after lunch in Pete’s car. It had
only one seat, and Billy Sawyer sat on the floor with his feet on the
running-board and his knees hunched up under his chin. We made good
time, for Pete’s boat is some goer, and we got to Mearsville about four
o’clock. On the way we went over our argument. Porter had told us what
we were to say and Billy was to do most of the talking. He was a peach
at talking, Billy was. He’d been on three debating teams and knew all
the tricks. Funny about him, too. You’d think with his gift for that
sort of stuff that he’d have turned into a lawyer or a statesman or
something, but he didn’t. Billy’s adding up figures in his father’s
factory to-day. Just shows that you never can tell, doesn’t it?
It was a pretty country around Mearsville, and we made the trip on
one of those peachy Indian summer days that sometimes happen along
in October. We had a pretty good time, too. We almost ran through
Mearsville without knowing it, because there wasn’t much in sight
except a post-office and a store. We asked at the post-office where Mr.
Perrin lived, and the postmaster came out and showed us how to go.
“Wonder,” said Billy, as we went on, “what sort his father is. If we
knew that it might help us.”
“What’s his business?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t know a thing except that Bob’s an only child. He
seems to have plenty of money, so I suppose his old man’s fairly well
fixed. If he’s one of the crabbed kind we might as well turn around
right now and go back.”
“Buck up,” said Pete. “When you turn that line of talk on him, Billy,
he’ll just wilt before our eyes.”
“Huh,” said Billy. “Wish you had it to do. Don’t see what I let them
rope me into this for, anyway. It’s not my funeral.”
“It’s what you get for knowing the chap,” said I. “Bet you that’s the
place now, the stone gate ahead of us.”
It had solid comfort written all over it. There was an old-style white
house that rambled around behind a lot of trees and some lawn and
nearly fooled you into thinking it was a genuine antique. When you
got near it, though, you saw it was a reproduction. It looked like a
compromise between a gentleman’s estate and a nice little place out of
town. Everything was neat and well groomed, and we felt like vandals
for mussing up the newly dusted gravel drive with the automobile
tracks. Pete was whistling “This is the Life” softly as we drew up
to the door. A trim-looking maid showed us into a living-room with
about a million long French windows and a thousand dollars’ worth of
white and yellow chrysanthemums standing around in tall vases. Billy
cleared his throat and Pete sneaked away to the further side of the
room, pretending he wanted to see the view from a window. I started to
follow, but Billy grabbed me.
Mr. Perrin came in the next instant. I don’t know what sort of a man
the others had pictured, but I know he didn’t look at all like what
I’d expected. If I’d seen him, say, in a club without knowing who he
was, and anyone had asked me to guess, I wouldn’t have thought twice.
“Noted explorer just back from successful rummage in Peru,” I’d have
answered. As Billy would say, he was that sort. He had a rather long,
lean face with a lot of lines, a wide mouth, a thin nose and a pair of
faded blue eyes that were deep set and looked lighter than they were
because his skin was as brown as a saddle. He was tall and straight and
lean and looked about as fit as any man I ever saw. I warmed up to him
right away. Couldn’t help it. There was something about that mouth and
those pale blue eyes that was awfully friendly. And when he shook hands
he did it quick and hard, and you could feel that his muscles were like
little steel wires. It was up to me to introduce myself and the others,
which I did, and as soon as I said “football” I saw by a little gleam
in his eyes that he was dead on to our game. But he told us in a nice
deep voice that he was glad to see us, got us seated in big comfortable
chairs, offered cigars and made us feel right at home. Then he waited,
smiling, for us to shoot. So Billy stuck his hands in his pockets and
opened up.
Billy did himself proud. I wish I could remember just what he said,
but, then, it was more the way he put it over than anything else.
Porter had tipped us to be dead sober. “Make him understand that the
situation is big and serious. Don’t smile except to be polite, and
then do it as if it hurt your face.” So Billy started out as grave
as a minister. He began by outlining the condition the team was in
because of injuries and such, dwelt on the hopeless position in which
the coaches found themselves and predicted ruin and disaster unless
new material could be found to prop the tottering structure, or words
to that effect. And all the time he spoke in low, fateful tones like a
doctor breaking the news to the family after a consultation. If he had
kept it up two minutes longer I’d have been in tears.
“I gathered from the papers,” said Mr. Perrin just as gravely, “that
things were in pretty bad shape at Cambridge. I’m very sorry, Mr.
Sawyer.”
Then he waited again, looking appropriately funereal. But there was
a little flicker in those blue eyes of his that told me he wasn’t as
concerned as he pretended.
Billy took a fresh start and began on Bob Perrin. He allowed you to
understand by the tone of his voice that there was a ray of hope,
after all, but that you weren’t by any means to think the patient out
of danger. He told about the fine work done by Bob last year on the
Freshman team and how if he would spring into the breach all might yet
be well. Billy said so many nice things about Bob that I couldn’t see
how his father could help looking a bit proud. He didn’t, though. He
just kept his eyes on Billy and waited. It seemed as if his watchful
waiting game was getting on Billy’s nerves, for Billy stumbled once or
twice and his voice began to flatten out a little. He took the ground
that in such a stupendous crisis as then confronted the college――the
college we all loved――Billy’s voice sort of took on a tremolo effect
there――all selfish thoughts and desires should be brushed aside. At
such a time it was the duty of all loyal sons of Harvard to――to put
their shoulders to the wheel, to banish prejudices, to forget self
and――er――strive as one man to avert the disaster that threatened to
engulf their glorious Alma Mater.
Said Mr. Perrin: “Did Bob send you out here?”
“No, Mr. Perrin, your son does not know of our visit. Mr. Porter, our
Head Coach, tried to persuade him to play, but he replied that he was
bound by a promise to you and that it would not be fair for him to ask
to be released from it. It was then that Mr. Porter decided to see you
himself, feeling certain, as he said, that when you once realized the
gravity of the situation you would eagerly and gladly give your consent
to Bob’s playing.”
“Ah.” Mr. Perrin glanced at Pete and then at me. “But neither of these
gentlemen is Mr. Porter, I believe?”
“No, sir. Mr. Haskell is Captain of the Varsity and Mr. Kirke is
Manager. Mr. Porter was unable to come since his presence at practice
is indispensable just now. We represent him, sir, and I have tried to
bring you his message just as he delivered it to me. Were he here he
could undoubtedly speak more convincingly, sir, but――――”
“No, no,” said Mr. Perrin. “You do yourself an injustice. He could not,
I am certain, have dispatched a more capable and eloquent emissary.”
He paused and looked toward the windows. “Gentlemen, I am going to
suggest that we go outdoors. This is much too fine a day to be inside.
You will, I hope, stay to dinner with us.”
We all said we wouldn’t think of it, but he didn’t pay much attention
to that.
“Let me have my way, please,” he went on. “Both Mrs. Perrin and I
shall be most pleased to have you. We don’t have many opportunities to
entertain, and you really must humor us. Besides, I want you to meet
her, and just now she is unable to appear. Now let us take a walk. I
want to show you my place. You know we folks who live in the country
always drag our visitors around the grounds the first thing.”
We went out on the porch. Mr. Perrin dropped behind to get his cap and
stick, and the three of us looked at each other questioningly. Billy
was frowning and Pete looked blank. I remember I shook my head. Mr.
Perrin joined us then, and we set out around the house. He showed us
his stable and barn and greenhouses and piggery and a cellar where
he raised mushrooms, and a lot of things like that. Pete got full of
enthusiasm right away and asked a lot of questions. Pete subscribes to
_Country Life_ and draws plans of model farms at lectures. Somehow,
out of doors we all forgot to be gloomy, and the first thing we knew
we were laughing at the colts in the paddock and chatting away just as
if there wasn’t any Stupendous Crisis. After we’d seen everything Mr.
Perrin led the way across a meadow to a little hill that had pine trees
clumped on top of it and brown needles underneath. It was when we were
climbing the hill that Mr. Perrin said:
“You must forgive me for being a bit slow. This leg of mine isn’t as
spry on the grades.”
I noticed then for the first time that he limped a little and bore
pretty heavily on his stick. I slowed down with him and asked:
“Accident, sir?”
“Yes,” he said. “I broke it in football.”
“Oh!” said I. I couldn’t think of anything else to say just then.
“It was in a game with Pennsylvania a good many years ago now,” he
went on. “We used to play on Jarvis Field in those days.”
“Where the tennis courts are now?” I asked. “Were you――were you on the
Varsity, sir?”
“Yes. I was captain that year. This break kept me out of the Yale game,
and I remember that I felt pretty badly about it.”
“It was pretty tough luck,” I muttered. I did a whole lot of thinking
the rest of the way up the hill.
When we got to the top we sat down on the pine needles in the sunlight,
and Mr. Perrin filled a pipe. “Perhaps,” he said as he started to light
it, “I shouldn’t do this, as you chaps are in training.” Billy and Pete
told him it didn’t matter any to them. It didn’t to me because I didn’t
smoke. I’d promised my folks not to until I was twenty-one. There was
a fine view from where we sat, and the country was as pretty as a
picture, with the sun getting low and sending long shafts of golden
light across the fields. It was quiet, too, so quiet you could hear a
cowbell tinkling half a mile away. Billy put his hands under his head
and stretched himself out on his back with a sigh. Pete hugged his
knees and looked blissful. I suppose he was thinking of the place he
meant to have when he was through college. There was a rock near me
with moss growing all over it, and I settled my back against it and
blinked at the sun. After a minute Mr. Perrin said:
“It always seems easier to me to think and talk out of doors. I suppose
it’s because I’ve spent a good deal of my life there.” And then,
speaking quietly and sort of lazily, he told us some things he’d seen
and that had happened to him. He wasn’t an explorer, after all. He was
an engineer and he had spent most of his life in the West and Southwest
building irrigating dams and canals and things. I’ll bet they were good
ones. He was that sort, as Billy would say. Some of the yarns he told
were corkers, and he told them in such a smiling, matter-of-fact way
that they sounded bully and made you want to pack up and hike out there
where such things happened. He had had adventures, all right! And he
had us laughing one minute and sitting still and gripping our hands the
next and hardly daring to breathe! Gee, if I could tell a story the
way he could, I’d never do another thing!
“It’s a big country out there,” he said finally, “with lots of things
to be done.”
“I should think,” said Pete, “you’d find it rather tame back here, Mr.
Perrin.”
“Tame? Not at all. I like this best. But then, I’m getting along toward
where the quiet life begins to look pretty good, boys. I find now when
I go back out there that saddles are harder than they used to be and
ponchos aren’t as soft to sleep on as hair mattresses. But I’m always
glad to get there again――and always glad to come back. In two or three
years more I won’t have to make the trip very often, I guess. Bob will
do that for me. He’s going to have a man’s job on his hands when he’s
ready for it.”
“Is he going to take up engineering too, sir?” I asked.
“No, that won’t be necessary. That part of it is done. Of course it’s
best for him to know something of it, and so he and I go out there in
the summers and I show him the why and the how. I dare say he learns
as well that way as he would if he took a course at the Scientific
School. Bob’s work will be to manage what I’ve built. It will be his
after a while, you see. Bob’s the only one we have and there won’t be
any others now. It’s a good deal like putting all your eggs in one
basket, you see. When you do that you’re liable to be mighty careful of
the basket.”
He filled his pipe again, looking off across the field toward where the
smoke was going up straight from the chimneys of the house. We didn’t
say anything. After a minute:
“It’s a fine, comforting thing to know that there’s someone coming
after you to carry things along,” he said thoughtfully. “It makes
what’s ahead of you look pretty trifling. I always feel a deep pity for
men who haven’t sons. It seems to me that they’ve failed in what God
sent ’em here to do. I guess your fathers know what I mean, and you
will know it, too, some day――I hope. I hate to think what it must be
like for men who haven’t any children when the shadows begin to deepen.
Maybe all fathers don’t feel the way I do about it, but I guess they
must. Four of the finest words I know of are these: ‘From father to
son.’ Well, well, I’m boring you with all this stuff. And it’s getting
a little chilly now. We’ll walk back and get ready for dinner. We dine
early out here. I hope you won’t mind.”
When we got back he took us upstairs to a fine big room, and it took
just a glance to show that it was Bob’s. There were all sorts of
photographs stuck around: school nines and elevens and track teams,
you know, with Bob’s face peering out from some of them. There was
a bookcase in one corner with all Bob’s old school books and story
books on the shelves. And there were some pewter cups on the mantel
and some pennants on the walls and a split baseball bat and a canoe
paddle with things written on it and a plaited hair bridle and a pair
of wicked-looking Mexican spurs. It was just a regular boy’s room with
all the things a fellow accumulates and hates to throw away even as he
grows older. Mr. Perrin took up some of the photographs and pointed out
Bob in them; Bob, a little kid in knickerbockers; Bob in track togs,
with his fingers tight over his grips; Bob holding a football in the
center of a group; Bob wearing chaps and a big sombrero and seated on
a cow pony. Then he went out and left us, and we washed up. No one said
very much, and we all hurried.
Downstairs we met Mrs. Perrin. I guess you’d call her homely, but she
was the sort of homely that looks good to a fellow. She was small and
looked not very strong, but she was all right. You knew she could do
one thing to the King’s taste, and that was to be a mother. We had a
bully dinner. Nothing fluffy, but regular food that went right to the
spot and stuck. We were all of us hungry, too, all of us except, maybe,
Mrs. Perrin. I don’t think she ate much, but she surely saw to it that
we did. Billy made a great hit with her because he had been at Milton
with Bob. She didn’t talk a whole lot about Bob, but you could see
that she was pretty proud of him just the same. There wasn’t a word
said about why we were there. We were just friends or college mates of
Bob’s, and that was enough. Mrs. Perrin was full of fun in a quiet way,
and it was dandy to see how she and Mr. Perrin played up to each other.
She prompted him to tell this story or that, and he came back at her
the same way. About the middle of dinner we felt as if we’d known those
folks for years! We sure had a dandy time.
We didn’t stay at the table after Mrs. Perrin went because we weren’t
smoking, and Mr. Perrin pretended he didn’t want to. So we went back to
the library, and the first thing I knew Pete was over at the piano with
Mrs. Perrin pulling the music about for him. Pete’s a wonder at the
ivories, and he played and we all sang; Mr. Perrin, too, when he knew
the song; and had a regular merry-merry for about an hour. Then we had
to mosey back to Cambridge, and Mr. Perrin sent out and had Pete’s car
brought around from the stable. They made us take sweaters and coats,
for we hadn’t brought any, and it was getting chilly. We were to leave
them with Bob. We said good-night to Mrs. Perrin in the library, and
she made us all promise to come again, which wasn’t hard to do, for we
were dead eager to. Mr. Perrin went out to the car with us and stood
around while we lighted up and packed ourselves in. Pete started the
engine the first time and tried not to look surprised, and we all
shook hands and Mr. Perrin said we mustn’t forget our promise to come
again, and we said he wasn’t to worry about that! But then he didn’t
move away, and we saw he had something to say and Pete throttled down
his engine.
“There’s one thing I’d like to know,” he said earnestly, “and it’s
this. I want Harvard to win this year, boys, perhaps every bit as much
as you do. I’m afraid I haven’t appeared very sympathetic this evening,
but I do sympathize with you in your trouble. I’ve been through with
something of the same sort myself, and I haven’t forgotten. And I’m
not going to tell you that whether we win or lose the world’s going to
keep on whirling. I know it didn’t seem so to me in the old days, and
it doesn’t seem so to you. I don’t believe there’s an old player who
follows the fortunes of the Team any more closely than I do, boys. I’ve
ridden eighty miles at night to learn the result of a Yale game. I’m
telling you this because I don’t want you to think that I’ve outgrown
my devotion to the college, my loyalty to the Team.”
He paused and Pete pretended to tinker with the switch.
“And now one thing more,” said Mr. Perrin. “Two things, rather; for
I want to tell you that I appreciate the fine way in which you have
refrained from showing impatience or criticism of my attitude in regard
to Bob. It may be that you secretly look on me as a selfish, pig-headed
old codger――――”
Billy started to say something, but Mr. Perrin continued:
“And perhaps I am. But partly because you have acted like three of
God’s gentlemen and partly because――well, because an old player can
never quite forget, I’m going to leave it in your hands. If you think
the Team needs Bob more than I do, you tell him that he is to go in
there and play his level best! Good-night, boys!”
* * * * *
Mearsville was ten miles behind before anyone said anything. Then
it was Billy, and, since we had a hard road and the engine purred
no louder than a kitten, we heard him even though he only muttered.
“Fellows _do_ get hurt,” he growled. “You can’t deny that. Look at the
list of them just in our own time: Choate and Riley and ‘Fan’ Tanner
and a whole bunch, to say nothing of this year’s list.”
A mile further on, I said: “I suppose a fellow with a busted leg
wouldn’t be much use out there on that job.”
Going into Worcester, Pete said: “There’s that chap Nelson.”
“Did well at Exeter,” said Billy.
“With six weeks to work on him,” I murmured, “seems to me――――”
Later Pete broke out with: “Hang him, he had no business saying that we
thought him selfish and pig-headed!”
“Still, we did, you know,” I reminded, “before.”
“Before, yes, but not after! Anyway, I didn’t.”
“Mean to say I did?” demanded Billy somewhat hotly.
“Shut up! What we’ve got to decide is this,” I said. “What are we going
to tell Porter to-morrow?”
“Tell him?” grunted Pete, taking a corner on two wheels. “Tell him
nothing doing!”
I showed this to Pete, who went in heavy for English Composition and
can talk you deaf, dumb and blind about characterization, climax,
crisis, suspense and _dénouement_, and he says I finished my story at
the last paragraph and that if I write any more I’ll be pulling an
anti-climax. Maybe he’s right, but I know that if I was reading this
yarn I’d want to know who won the Yale game. And so I’m going to tell
you. And if you think the way Pete does, why, you can stop up there
where it says “nothing doing.” That’s all right, isn’t it?
Well, Bob Perrin didn’t come out for the team. Porter fumed and kicked
for a while, and then yanked Nelson off the bench and sicked half a
dozen assistant coaches on him. He had a pretty tough time of it for
about five weeks. No matter which way he turned there was always one
or more coaches waiting to grab him. I’m not sure they didn’t read him
to sleep out of the rules book and camp outside his door at night. But
they did what they set out to do, believe me! They made an All-America
end of him, even if they almost killed him in the operation. And,
although we lost to Brown, and although Princeton swamped us, we came
right back on the twenty-fourth of November and put it over the Elis, 7
to 3.
As Billy would say, we were that sort!