"LEAVE IT TO HICKS"
Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan, known to toil-tortured Gold and Green
football squads from time immemorial as "the Slave-Driver," Captain Butch
Brewster, and serious Deacon Radford, the star Bannister quarter-back,
foregathered around a table in the Camp Bannister grub-shack.
It was ten-thirty of the morning whose dawn T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had
blithesomely hailed with an impromptu musicale and saengerfest on "Lookout
There!" rock, and the football triumvirate were in togs. The squad, over in
the bunkhouse, noisily donned gridiron armor for the morning practice, and
the pestiferous Hicks was maintaining a mysterious silence, somewhere.
This football trio, on whom rested the responsibility of rounding out a
winning Bannister eleven, vastly resembled a coterie of German generals,
back of the trenches, studying a war-map. Before them was spread what
seemed to be a large checker-board. It was a miniature gridiron, with the
chalk-marks painted in white; there were thumb-tacks stuck here and there,
some with flat tops painted green and gold, others, representing the enemy,
were solid red. The former had names printed on them, Butch, Roddy,
Beef, and so on. By sticking these on the board, the three directors of
Bannister's football destiny could work out new plays, and originate
possible winning lineups.
"We've just got to win the State Championship this season, Coach!" declared
Butch, banging the table emphatically, as he stated a self-evident fact.
"It's my last year for Old Bannister, and so with Beef and Pudge. I'll give
every ounce of strength I possess In every game, to make that pennant float
over Bannister Field!"
"Bannister _will_ win it!" vowed the behemoth Beef, his good-natured
countenance grim, and his jaw set. "Not for five years has a Gold and Green
team won the Championship--not since the year before Butch and I were
Freshmen! We've got a splendid bunch of material to build a team with,
and--"
"Our biggest problem is this," spoke Coach Corridan, as with a phenomenal
display of strength he took Beef McNaughton between thumb and forefinger
and placed him on the field. "We must strengthen both line and backfield,
for we lost by graduation Babe McCabe, Heavy Hughes, and Jack Merritt. Now,
to replace that lost power--"
Just then, from directly beneath the open window by which they had
gathered, like the midnight serenade of a romantic lover, sounded
the well-known foghorn voice of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., as to the
plunkety-plunk of a banjo accompaniment, he warbled melodiously:
"Gone are the days--I used to spend with Car-o-li-nah!
She had the sunshine in her laughter (_plunkety-plunk_)
Just like that state they named her after--"
"_Hicks_!" announced Butch, stealthily approaching the window, and
beckoning his companions. "Easy--look at him, Deke, there he is, Hicks,
the irrepressible! We might as well attempt to stab a rhinocerous to death
with a humming-bird's feather, as to try and reform _him_!"
Arrayed like a lily of the field, a model of sartorial splendor, Hicks
occupied a chair beneath the window, tilted back gracefully against the
side of the grub-shack. He had decked his splinter-structure with a
dazzling Palm Beach suit, and a glorious pink silk shirt, off-set by a
lurid scarf. A Panama hat decorated his head, white Oxfords and flamboyant
hosiery adorned his feet, while the inevitable Cheshire cat grin beautified
his cherubic countenance. A latest "best seller" was propped on his knees,
and as he perused its thrilling pages, he carelessly strummed his beloved
banjo, and in stentorian tones chanted a sentimental ballad:
"Gone are the days--the golden days I'm dreaming of,
I think I hear her softly calling (plunkety-plunk)
'Will you be back? Will you be back? (plunk-plunk)
Back to the Car-o-li-nah you love?'"(plunkety-plunk),
For three golden campus years T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had gayly pursued the
even tenor (or _basso_, since he possessed a foghorn, subterranean voice)
of his Bannister career. He absolutely refused to take life seriously, and
he was forever arousing the wrath--mostly pretended, for no one could be
really angry with the genial youth--of his comrades, by twanging his banjo
and roaring out rollicking ballads at all hours. He was never so happy
as when entertaining a crowd of happy students in his cozy quarters,
or escorting a Hicks' Personally Conducted expedition downtown for a
Beef-Steak Bust, at his expense, at Jerry's, the rendezvous of hungry
collegians.
However, despite his butterfly existence, Hicks, possessed of a
scintillating mind, always set the scholastic pace for 1919, by means of
occasional study-sprints, as he characteristically called them. But when it
came to helping his beloved Dad realize a long-cherished ambition to behold
his only son and heir shatter Hicks, Sr.'s, celebrated athletic records, it
was a different story. T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., ever since he committed
the farcical _faux pas_ of running the wrong way with the pigskin in
the Freshman-Sophomore football contest of his first year, had been a
super-colossal athletic joke at old Bannister.
His record to date, beside that reverse touchdown that won for the
Sophomores, consisted of scoring a home-run with the bases congested, on a
strike-out; of smashing hurdles and cross-bars on the track; endangering
his heedless career with the shot and hammer; and making a ridiculous farce
of every event he entered, to the vast hilarity of the students, who, with
the exception of Butch Brewster, had no idea his ridiculous efforts were in
earnest. In the high-jump, however, Hicks had given considerable promise,
which to date the grasshopper collegian had failed to keep.
Hicks, the lovable, impulsive, and irrepressible, with his invariable sunny
disposition, his generous nature, and his democratic, loyal comradeship
for everybody, was loved by old Bannister. The students forgave him his
pestersome ways, his frequent torturing of them with banjo-twanging and
rollicking ballads. His classmates idolized him, Juniors and Sophomores
were his true friends, and entering Freshmen always regarded this
happy-go-lucky youth as a demigod of the campus.
Big Butch Brewster, who was forever futilely lecturing the heedless Hicks,
thrust his head from the grub-shack window, fought down a grin, and sternly
arraigned his graceless comrade:
"Hicks, you frivolous, campus-cluttering, infinitesimal atom of nothing,
you labor under the insane delusion that college life is a continuous
vaudeville show. You absolutely refuse to take your Bannister years
seriously, you banjo-thumping, pillow-punishing, campus-torturing
nonentity. You will never grasp the splendid opportunities within your
reach! You have no ambition but to strum that banjo, roar ridiculous songs,
fuss up like a tailor's dummy, and pester your comrades, or drag them down
to Jerry's for the eats! You won't be earnest, you Human Cipher, Before you
entered Bannister, you formed your ideas and ideals of campus life from
colored posters, moving-pictures, magazine stories, and stage dramas like
'Brown of Harvard'; you have surely lived up, or down, to those ideals,
you--"
"Them's harsh words, Butch!" joyously responded the grinning Hicks,
unchastened, for he knew good Butch Brewster would not, for a fortune, have
him forsake his care-free nature. "Thou loyal comrade of my happy campus
years, what wouldst thou of me?--have me don sack-cloth and ashes, strike
'The Funeral March' on my golden lyre, and cry out in anguish, _'ai! ai_!
'Nay, nay, a couple of nays; college years are all too brief; hence I
shall, by my own original process, extract from them all the sunshine and
happiness possible, and by my wonderful musical and vocal powers, bring joy
to my colleagues, who--_Ouch_, Butch--look out for that nail, you inhuman
elephant--"
Big Butch, at that juncture of Hicks' monologue, had effectively terminated
it by leaning from the window, grasping his unsuspecting comrade by the
scruff of the neck, and dragging him over the window-ledge, into the
grub-shack, and the presence of Coach Corridan and Deacon Radford.
Strenuous objection was registered, both by the futilely struggling Hicks,
and a nail projecting from the sill, which caught in the Palm Beach
trousers and ripped a long rent in them; fortunately, Hicks' anatomy
escaped a similar fate.
"A ripping good move, eh-what?" chuckled Hicks, twisting like a
contortionist, to view the damage done his vestiture, "Hello, what have we
here?--the German field-map, by the Van Dyke beard of the Prophet! I
bring the Kaiser's order, ham and eggs, and a cup of coffee. No, that's a
mistake. General Hen Von Kluck, lead a brigade of submarines up yon hill to
thunder the Russian fort! Von Hindering-Bug, send a flock of aeroplanes and
Zeppelins to the Allied trenches, the enemy is shooting Russian caviare
at--"
"Hicks," said Head Coach Corridan, smiling at Butch Brewster's indignation,
"you are such a wonder at solving perplexing problems by your marvelous
'inspirations,' suppose you turn the scintillating searchlight of your
colossal intellect upon the question that Bannister must solve, to produce
a championship eleven!"
It was T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s, inveterate habit, whenever a baffling
situation, or what the French call an "_impasse_" presented itself, to
state with the utmost confidence, "Oh, just leave it to Hicks!" On
most occasions, when he made this remark, accompanied by a swaggering
braggadocio that never failed to make good Butch Brewster wrathful, the
happy-go-lucky youth possessed not the slightest idea of how the problem
was to be solved. He just uttered his rash promise, and then trusted to his
needed inspiration to illuminate a way out! And, as the Bannister campus
well knew, Hicks had solved more than one torturing question by an
inspiration that flashed on his intellect, when all hope of a satisfactory
solution seemed dead.
For example, in his Sophomore year, when the Freshman leader, James
Roderick Perkins, that same Titian-haired Roddy who was now a bulwark at
right end, became charged with a Napoleonic ambition, and organized a
Freshman Equal Rights campaign, paralyzing Bannister football by refusing
to allow Freshmen to try for athletic teams, unless their demands were
granted. Hicks, when his inspiration finally smote him, smashed the
Votes-for-Freshmen crusade, and quelled Roddy, Futilely racking his brain
for a counter-attack, having blithely told the troubled campus, "Just leave
it to Hicks," he had ceased to worry, and then the inspiration had come, By
The Big Brotherhood of Bannister giving the upper-classmen full government
over Freshmen, a scheme successfully carried through, the peril had been
thwarted.
"I got a letter from Dad yesterday," began Hicks, somewhat irrelevantly,
considering the Coach's remarks, "and he said--"
"'--Inclosed find the check you wrote for,'" quoth Deacon Radford,
humorously. "'If you keep up this pace, I shall have to turn my steel
mills to producing war munitions, to pay your college bills.' Say, Hicks,
seriously, listen to our problem, and suggest what Coach Corridan should
do."
While Hicks' athletic powers were known to equal those of the paralyzed
oldest inhabitant of a Civil War Veterans' Home, the sunny youth knew
football thoroughly; often he originated plays that the team worked out
with success, and his suggestions were always weighed carefully by the
football directors. So, after he had adjusted his lurid scarf at the
correct angle, and gazed ruefully at his torn habiliments, the sunshiny
Senior seated himself at the table, before the "war-map," and gave heed to
the Coach.
[Illustration A: 'Here's the problem, Hicks']
"Here's the problem, Hicks," said the Slave-Driver, indicating the
Bannister eleven, represented by the gold and green topped thumb-tacks.
"From the line we lost Babe, a tackle, Heavy, a guard, and Jack Merritt, a
star end. Now, Monty Merriweather will hold down Jack's place O. K.--I can
shift Beef from right half to guard, and put Butch at right-half, while
Bunch Bingham can take care of Babe's old berth at tackle. But I have no
one to shoot in at full-back, when I shift Butch; you see, Hicks, my plan
is to build an eleven that can execute old-time, line-smashing football,
and up-to-date open play as well; I want fast ends and halves, with a
snappy quarter, and I have them; also, the backfield is heavy enough for
line-bucking, if I get my beefy full-back. I must have a big, heavy, fast
player, a giant who simply can't be stopped when he hits the line. With
Butch and Biff at halves, Deke at quarter. Roddy and Monty ends, and my
heavy line--why, a ponderous, irresistible Hercules at full-back will--"
"Say!" grinned the irrepressible Hicks, as Coach Corridan warmed up to
his vision, "you don't want _much_, Coach! Why don't you ask Ted Coy, the
famous ex-Yale full-back, to give up his business and play the position for
you? Maybe you can persuade Charlie Brickley, a _fair_ sort of dropkicker,
to quit coaching Hopkins, and kick a few goals for old Bannister! I get
you, Coach--you want a fellow about the size of the _Lusitania,_ made of
structural steel, a Brobdingnagian Colossus who will guarantee to advance
the ball fifteen yards per rush, or money refunded!
"Why, Coach, while you are wanting things, just wish for a chap who will
play the entire game himself, taking the ball down the field, while the
rest of the team are pushed along in rolling-chairs, while imbibing pink
tea. Get a prodigy who will instill such terror into our rivals that
instead of playing the schedule, Bannister will simply arrange with other
teams to mark themselves down defeated, and then agree what the scores
shall be."
"I knew it!" growled Butch Brewster, glowering at the jocular youth. "We
should never have consulted him on this problem, for it is not one within
his power to solve, even though he performed the miracle of talking
seriously about it Now--"
"Now--" echoed Hicks, with pretended seriousness, "Coach, you just hand me
the blue-prints and specifications of said Gargantuan Hercules, and I'll
try to corrall just such a phenomenon as you desire. Never hesitate to
consult me on such important matters, for I am ever-ready to cast aside my
own multifarious duties, when my Alma Mater needs my mental assistance,
or--"
"Hicks, are you _crazy_?" fleered Deacon Radford, moved to excitement,
despite his great faith in the versatile youth. "Full-backs like that do
not grow on trees; the only one I ever read of was _Ole Skjarsen_, in
George Fitch's 'Siwash College Stories,' and he was purely fictitious. We
know you have accomplished some great things by your 'inspirations,' but as
for this--"
"Just leave it to Hicks" quoth the irrepressible youth, swaggering toward
the door with an affected nonchalant self-confidence that aroused Butch to
wrath, and vastly amused his companions. "I'll admit a human juggernaut
like Coach Corridan dreams of will be hard to round up, but, I'll have an
inspiration soon. Don't worry about your old eleven, your problem will be
solved, and you will have a team that can play fifty-seven varieties of
football. _Raw revolver_, my comrades."
When the graceless T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had sauntered gracefully out of
the grub-shack, big Butch Brewster, almost exploding with suppressed wrath,
stared at Slave-Driver Corridan and staid Deacon Radford a full minute;
then he grinned,
"That--Hicks!" he murmured, struggling against a desire to laugh. "What a
ridiculous prophecy! 'Just leave it to Hicks!' Well, that means the problem
goes unsolved, for though I confess he _is_ brilliant, and his so-called
'inspirations' have helped old Bannister; when it comes to rushing out and
lassoing a smashing. Herculean full-back--_bah_!"
Ten minutes later, when Coach Corridan and the Gold and Green squad climbed
the bluff to the field back of Camp Bannister, for morning signal drill,
their last memory was of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., arrayed in radiant
vestiture, his chair tilted against the bunkhouse--the chords of the banjo,
and his foghorn voice drifting to them on the warm September air:
"Oh, father and mother pay all the bills (_plunk-plunk_)
And we have all the fun (_plunkety-plunk_)
With the money that we spend in college life!"
Two hours afterward, as a tired, perspiring squad scrambled down the bluff,
and made for the cool waters of Lake Conowingo, a mysterious silence,
like a mighty wave, literally surged toward them. Camp Bannister seemed
deserted, the sun was still shining, the birds sang as cheerily as ever,
but instinctively the collegians felt an indescribable loneliness, a sense
of tremendous loss.
"_Hicks_!" shouted Butch Brewster, loudly, his voice shattering the
stillness. "Hicks--ahoy! I say, Hicks--"
Old Hinky-Dink, a letter in his hand, hobbled from the cook-tent toward
them; like a sinister harbinger of evil he advanced, grinning deprecatingly
at the squad:
"Mistah Hicks am gone!" he announced importantly. "He done gib me fo' bits
to row him ober to de village, to cotch de noon 'spress fo' Philadelphy!
Heah am a letter what he lef'--"
Big Butch Brewster, to whom the _billet-doux_ was addressed in T. Haviland
Hicks, Jr.'s, familiar scrawl, tore open the envelope, and while the squad
listened, he read aloud the message left by that sunny-souled youth;
"DEAR BUTCH:
"Coach Corridan will have to use the alarm clock from now on! I'm called
away on business. See that my stuff gets to Bannister O.K. Stow it in the
room next to yours. I'll be back at college some time in the next century.
Give my _adieux_ to Coach Corridan and the squad.
"Yours truthfully,
"T. HAVILAND HICKS, JR.
"P.S.: Tell Coach Corridan he should worry--_not_! I'm hot on the trail of
a fullback that will make Ted Coy at his coyest look like the paralyzed
inmate of an old man's home. Just leave it to Hicks!"