AMY AIRS HIS VIEWS
Clint settled down into his appointed niche at Brimfield, one of one
hundred and seventy-two individuals of various ages between twelve and
twenty. At Brimfield there were six forms, and Clint had, after a brief
examination, been assigned to the fourth. He found that he was well up
with the class in everything save Greek and Latin, and these, Greek
especially, soon proved hard sledding. The instructor, Mr. Simkins--or
"Uncle Sim," as he was called--was no easy taskmaster. He entertained a
profound reverence for Aristotle and Vergil and Cicero and Homer and all
the others, and failed to understand why his classes thought them
tiresome and, sometimes, dry. His very enthusiasm, however, made him
easy to impose on, and many a fellow received good marks merely because
he simulated a fervid interest. But Clint was either too honest or
possessed too little histrionic talent to attempt that plan, and by the
time the Fall term was a week old, he, together with many another, was
just barely keeping his head above water. He confessed discouragement
to his room-mate one evening. Amy was sympathetic but scarcely helpful.
"It's tommyrot, that's what it is," Amy said with conviction. "What good
does it do you to know Greek, anyway? I'll bet you anything that Uncle
Sim himself couldn't go to Athens tomorrow and order a cup of coffee and
a hard-boiled egg! Or, if he did order them, he'd get a morning
newspaper and toothpick. Last Spring I was in the boot-blacking emporium
in the village one afternoon and Horace came in to get his shoes
shined. There--"
"Who is Horace!" asked Clint dejectedly.
"Mr. Daley; modern languages; you have him in French. Well, there was a
notice stuck on the wall across the place. It was in Greek and I
couldn't make anything out of it at all and I asked Horace what it said.
Of course he just read it right off, with a mere passing glance; did he
not? Yes, he did not! He hemmed and hawed and muttered and finally said
he couldn't make out the second word. I told him that was my trouble,
too. Then we asked the Greek that runs the place and he told us it said
that shines on Sundays and holidays were ten cents. Of course, Horace
isn't a specialist in Greek, but still he's been through college, and
what I say is--"
"I don't believe the men who wrote the stuff really understood it," said
Clint.
"Oh, they understood a little of it, all right. They could sign their
names, probably. The only consolation I find is this, Clint. A couple of
hundred years from now, when everyone is talking Esperanto or some other
universal language, the kids will have to study English. Can't you see
them grinding over the Orations of William Jennings Bryan and wondering
why the dickens anyone ever wanted to talk such a silly language? That's
when we get our revenge, Clint. We won't be around to see it, but it'll
be there."
Clint had to smile at the picture Amy drew, but he didn't find as much
consolation as Amy pretended to, and Xenophon didn't come any easier. He
was heartily glad when the study-hour came to an end and he could
conscientiously close his books.
The termination of that hour was almost invariably announced by the
dismal squawking of Penny Durkin's fiddle. Sometimes it was to be heard
in the afternoon, but not always, for Penny was a very busy youth. He
was something of a "shark" at lessons, was a leading light in the
Debating Circle and conducted a second-hand business in all sorts of
things from a broken tooth-mug to a brass bed. Penny bought and sold and
traded and, so rumour declared, made enough to nearly pay his tuition
each year. If you wanted a rug or a table or a chair or a picture or a
broken-down bicycle or a pair of football pants you went to Penny, and
it was a dollar to a dime that Penny either had in his possession, or
could take you to someone else who had, the very thing you were looking
for. If you paid cash you got it reasonably cheap--or you did if you
knew enough to bargain craftily--and if you wanted credit Penny charged
you a whole lot more and waited on you promptly for the instalment at
the first of each month. And besides these activities Penny was a
devoted student of music.
He was an odd-looking fellow, tall and thin, with a lean face from which
a pair of pale and near-sighted eyes peered forth from behind
rubber-rimmed spectacles. His hair was almost black and was always in
need of trimming, and his garments--he seldom wore trousers, coat and
vest that matched--always seemed about to fall off him. Clint's first
glimpse of Penny came one afternoon. The door of Number 13 was open as
Clint returned to his room after football practice and lugubrious
sounds issued forth. It was very near the supper hour and Penny's room
was lighted only by the rays of the sinking sun. Against the window
Clint saw him in silhouette, his hair wildly ruffled, his violin under
his chin, his bow scraping slowly back and forth as he leaned
near-sightedly over the sheet of music spread on the rack before him.
The strains that issued from the instrument were awful, but there was
something fine in the player's absorption and obvious content, and what
had started out as a laugh of amusement changed to a sympathetic smile
as Clint tiptoed on to his own door.
The sorrow of Penny's young life was that, although he had made
innumerable attempts, he could not succeed in the formation of a school
orchestra. There was a Glee Club and a Musical Society, the latter
composed of performers on the mandolin, banjo and guitar, but no one
would take any interest in Penny's project. Or no one save a fellow
named Pillsbury. Pillsbury played the bass viol, and once a week or so
he and Penny got together and spent an entranced hour. Time was when
such meetings took place in Penny's room or in Pillsbury's room, but
popular indignation put an end to that. Nowadays they took their
instruments to the gymnasium and held their chamber concerts in the
trophy room. Amy one day drew Clint's attention to a fortunate
circumstance. This was that, while there was a connecting door between
Number 14 and Number 15, there was none between Number 14 and Number 13.
That fact, Amy declared, rendered their room fairly habitable when Penny
was pouring out his soul. "It's lucky in another way," he added, staring
darkly at the buff-coloured wall that separated them from Number 13. "If
that door was on this side I'd have broken it open long ago and
done murder!"
Clint laughed and inquired: "Who rooms on the other side?"
"Schuman and Dreer." The contemptuous tone of his reply caused Clint to
ask:
"Anything wrong with them?"
"Oh, Schuman's all right, I guess, but Dreer's a pill." There was a
wealth of contempt in the word "pill" as Amy pronounced it, and Clint
asked innocently what a "pill" was.
"A pill," replied Amy, "is--is--well, there are all sorts of pills. A
fellow who toadies to the instructors is a pill. A fellow who is too
lazy to play football or baseball or tennis or anything else and
pretends the doctor won't let him is a pill. A fellow who has been to
one school and got fired and then goes to another and is always
shooting off his mouth about how much better the first school is is the
worst kind of pill. And that's the kind Harmon Dreer is. He went to
Claflin for a year and a half and then got into some sort of mess and
was expelled. Then the next Fall he came here. This is his second year
here and he's still gabbing about how much higher class Claflin is and
how much better they do everything there and--oh, all that sort of rot.
I told him once that if the fellows at Claflin were so much classier
than we are I could understand why they didn't let him stay there. He
didn't like it. He doesn't narrate his sweet, sad story to me any more.
If he ever does I'm likely to forget that I'm a perfect gentleman."
But Clint's neighbours were not of overpowering interest to him those
days. There were more absorbing matters, pleasant and unpleasant, to
fill his mind. For one thing, he was trying very hard to make a place on
one of the football teams. He hadn't any hope of working into the first
team. Perhaps when he started he may, in spite of his expressed doubts,
have secretly entertained some such hope, but by the end of the second
day of practice he had abandoned it. The brand of football taught by
Coach Robey and played by the 'varsity team was ahead of any Clint had
seen outside a college gridiron and was a revelation to him. Even by the
end of the first week the first team was in what seemed to Clint
end-of-season form, although in that Clint was vastly mistaken, and his
own efforts appeared to him pretty weak and amateurish. But he held on
hard, did his best and hoped to at least retain a place on the third
squad until the final cut came. And it might just be, he told himself in
optimistic moments, that he'd make the second! Meanwhile he was enjoying
it. It's remarkable what a lot of extremely hard work a boy will go
through if he likes football, and what a deal of pleasure he will get
out of it! Amy pretended to be totally unable to get that point of view.
One afternoon when Clint returned to prepare for supper with a lower lip
twice the normal size of that feature Amy indulged in sarcasm.
"Oh, the proud day!" he declaimed, striking an attitude. "Wounded on the
field of battle! Glory! Triumph! Pæans! My word, old top, but I
certainly am proud to be the chum of such a hero! I'm so sot-up I could
scream for joy. Football's a wonderful pastime, isn't it?"
"Silly chump!" mumbled Clint painfully.
"Yes, indeed, a wonderful pastime," ruminated Amy, seating himself on
the window-seat and hugging one knee. "All a fellow has to do is to go
out and work like a dray-horse and a pile-driver and street-roller for a
couple of hours every afternoon, get kicked in the shins and biffed in
the eye and rolled in the dirt and ragged by one coach, one captain and
one quarter-back. That's all he has to do except learn a lot of signals
so he can recognise them in the fraction of a second, be able to recite
the rules frontward and backward and both ways from the middle and live
on indigestible things like beef and rice and prunes. For that he gets
called a 'mutt' and a 'dub' and a 'disgrace to the School' and, unless
he's lucky enough to break a leg and get out of it before the big game,
he has twenty-fours hours of heart-disease and sixty minutes of glory.
And his picture in the paper. He knows it's his picture because there's
a statement underneath that Bill Jones is the third criminal from the
left in the back row. And it isn't the photographer's fault if the
good-looking half-back in the second row moved his head just as the
camera went _snap_ and all that shows of Bill Jones is a torn and
lacerated left ear!"
"For the love of Mike, Amy, shut up!" pleaded Clint. "You talk so much
you don't say anything! Besides, you told me once you used to play
yourself when you first came here."
"So I did," agreed Amy calmly. "But I saw the error of my ways and quit.
In me you see a brand snatched from the burning. Why, gosh, if I'd kept
on I'd be a popular hero now! First Formers would copy my socks and
neckties and say 'Good morning, _Mister_ Byrd,' and the _Review_ would
refer to me as 'that sterling player, Full-back Byrd.' And Harvard and
Yale and Princeton scouts would be camping on my trail and offering me
valuable presents and taking me to lunch at clubs. Oh, I had a narrow
escape, I can tell you! When I think how narrow I shudder." He proved it
by having a sort of convulsion on the window-seat. "Clint, when it's all
said and done, a fellow's a perfect, A-plus fool to play football when
he can enlist in the German army and die in a trench!"
"I got away for twenty yards this afternoon and made a touchdown,"
proclaimed Clint from between swollen lips, trying to keep the pride
from his voice.
Amy threw up his hands in despair.
"I'll say no more," he declared. "You're past help, Clint. You've tasted
blood. Go on, you poor mistaken hero, and maim yourself for life. I
wash my hands of you."
"You'd better wash them of some of that dirt I see and come to supper,"
Clint mumbled. "Gee, if I'd talked half as much as you have in the last
ten minutes I'd be starved!"