[Sidenote: Overdoing Altruism]
Oscar Colegrove was the most popular boy in the Vernon High School. His
kindness and courtesy won the girls, his unusual size and strength were
admired by the younger boys, and his manliness won the love and respect
of the older boys, but he was not studious enough to gain the approval
of his teachers. He was an especial trial to Mr. Watkins, teacher of
Caesar. He had never understood English grammar—the Latin forms meant
nothing to him. When he recited, everybody was glad when he got through.
But Oscar was a famous basketball player. Mr. Watkins had decided to
make him carry his Latin or drop out of athletics. He had revolved in
his mind the best method of making this fact known, but had come to no
definite conclusion, when fate seemed to take things in hand.
One morning Oscar was unusually stupid in Caesar. Mr. Watkins kept him
on his feet asking him question after question and growing more and more
angry with every wrong answer. He even asked him to translate the
beginning chapter about “All Gaul,” so well known to every student of
Latin. Oscar ludicrously stumbled over the easiest parts. Mr. Watkins
was the angrier because he had thought to cause Oscar to be ridiculed by
his classmates, who only seemed to suffer with the tortured boy.
Finally, in disgust, Mr. Watkins banged the textbook down on the table
and said, in angry tones, “Oscar Colegrove, you shall not play another
game of basketball until you can make a decent recitation in Latin.”
“You don’t mean that I can’t play tonight. (That night a game was to be
played at Vernon with a famous out-of-town team.)
“O, I know you want to show off tonight! You’re afraid somebody else
will get the honors due to you, if you drop out. You’re too selfish to
want to give up being a hero. This is your last game until this Latin is
learned.”
That night Oscar played on the team and the next day he was absent from
school.
When Mr. Watkins went to the recitation room to meet his class in
Caesar, he found not a student there. On his desk was an envelope
addressed to him; opening it mechanically, he found this note within,
signed by all but three of the class.
“The Caesar class will be adjourned until the most unselfish of its
members, Oscar Colegrove, is allowed to play basketball as well as to go
on with his studies.”
Mr. Watkins called a meeting of the school board that night and admitted
that he had not handled the case of the delinquent pupil wisely.
“I contemplated dropping him from the team and I wanted to show the
class that I was justified by letting them see how little he knew,” Mr.
Watkins said in self-defense.
In the private conference the next day, Oscar promised to study his
Latin more faithfully and the entire class reassembled. Oscar’s lessons
were better learned thereafter and Mr. Watkins seemed to have gained his
point, but he knew too well that he would not be able that year to
fulfill his earlier prophecies of being an ideal leader of his students.