HICKS MAKES A RASH PROPHECY
"Come on, Butch! Atta boy--some fin, old top! Say, you Beef--you're asleep
at the switch. What time do you want to be called? More pep there,
Monty--bust that little old bulb, Roddy! Aw, rotten! _Say_, Ballard, your
playing will bring the Board of Health down on you--why don't you bring
your first team out? Umpire? What--do you call that an umpire? Why, he's
a highway robber, a bandit. Put a 'Please Help the Blind' sign on that
hold-up artist!"
Big Butch Brewster, captain of the Bannister College baseball squad,
navigating down the third-floor corridor of Bannister Hall, the Senior
dormitory, laden with suitcases, bat-bags, and other impedimenta, as Mr.
Julius Caesar says, and vastly resembling a bell-hop in action, paused in
sheer bewilderment on the threshold of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s, cozy room.
"Hicks!" stormed the bewildered Butch, wrathfully, "what in the name of Sam
Hill _are_ you doing? Are you crazy, you absolutely insane lunatic? This
is a study-hour, and even if _you_ don't possess an intellect, some of the
fellows want to exercise their brains an hour or so! Stop that ridiculous
action."
The spectacle Butch Brewster beheld was indeed one to paralyze that
pachydermic collegian, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., the sunny-souled,
irrepressible Senior, danced madly about on the tiger-skin rug in midfloor,
evidently laboring under the delusion that he was a lunatical Hottentot at
a tribal dance; he waved his arms wildly, like a signaling brakeman, or
howled through a big megaphone, and about his toothpick structure was
strung his beloved banjo, on which the blithesome youth twanged at times an
accompaniment to his jargon:
"Come on, Skeet, take a lead (_plunkety-plunk_!) Say, d'ye wanta marry
first base--divorce yourself from that sack! (_plunk-plunk_!) _Oh_, you
bonehead--steal--you won't get arrested for it! Hi! Yi! _Ouch_, Butch! Oh,
I'll be good--"
At this moment, the indignant Butch abruptly terminated T. Haviland Hicks,
Jr.'s, noisy monologue by seizing that splinter-youth firmly by the scruff
of the neck and forcibly hurling him on the davenport. Seeing his loyal
class-mate's resemblance to a Grand Central Station baggage-smasher, the
irrepressible Senior forthwith imitated a hotel-clerk:
"Front!" howled the grinning Hicks, to an imaginary bellboy, "Show this
gentleman to Number 2323! Are you alone, sir, or just by yourself? I think
you will like the room-it faces on the coal-chute, and has hot and cold
folding-doors, and running water when the roof leaks! The bed is made once
a week, regularly, and--"
"Hicks, you Infinitesimal Atom of Nothing!" growled big Butch, ominously.
"What were you doing, creating all that riot, as I came down the corridor?
What's the main idea, anyway, of--"
"Heed, friend of my campus days," chortled the graceless Hicks, keeping
a safe distance from his behemoth comrade, "tomorrow-your baseball
aggregation plays Ballard College, at that knowledge-factory, for the
Championship of the State. Because nature hath endowed me with the
Herculean structure of a Jersey mosquito, I am developing a 56-lung-power
voice, and I need practice, as _I_ am to be the only student-rooter at the
game tomorrow! Q.E.D.! And as for any Bannister student, except perhaps
Theophilus Opperdyke and Thor, desiring to investigate the interiors of
their lexicons tonight, I prithee, just periscope the campus."
"I guess you are right, Hicks!" grinned Butch Brewster, as he looked from
the window, down on an indescribably noisy scene. "For once, your riotous
tumult went unheard. Say, get your traveling-bag ready, and leave that
pestersome banjo behind, if you want to go with the nine!"
Several members of the Gold and Green nine, embryo American and National
League stars, roosted on the Senior Fence between the Gymnasium and the
Administration Building, with, suitcases and bat-bags on the grass. In a
few minutes old Dan Flannagan's celebrated jitney-bus would appear in the
offing, coming to transport the Bannister athletes downtown to the station,
for the 9 P.M. express to Philadelphia. Incited by Cheer-Leaders Skeezicks
McCracken and Snake Fisher, several hundred youths encouraged the nine,
since, because of approaching final exams., they were barred by Faculty
order from accompanying the team to Ballard. In thunderous chorus they
chanted:
"One more Job for the undertaker!
More work for the tombstone maker!
In the local ceme_tery_, they are very--very--_very_
Busy on a brand-new grave for--Ballard!"
As the lovable Hicks expressed it, "'Coming events cast their shadows
before.' Commencement overshadows our joyous campus existence!" However, no
Bannister acquaintance of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., could detect wherein the
swiftly approaching final separation from his Alma Mater had affected in
the least that happy-go-lucky, care-free, irrepressible youth. If anything,
it seemed that Hicks strove to fight off thoughts of the end of his golden
campus years, using as weapons his torturesome saengerfests, his Beefsteak
Busts down at Jerry's, and various other pastimes, to the vast indignation
of his good friend and class-mate, Butch Brewster, who tried futilely to
lecture him into the proper serious mood with which Seniors must sail
through Commencement!
"You are a Senior, Hicks, a Senior!" Butch would explain wrathfully. "You
are popularly supposed to be dignified, and here you persist in acting like
a comedian in a vaudeville show! I suppose you intend to appear on the
stage, and, when handed your sheepskin, respond by twanging your banjo and
roaring a silly ballad."
Yet, the cheery Hicks had been very busy, since that memorable day when,
thanks to Caesar Napoleon and the hoax of the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope-Brigade
of the track squad, he had cleared the cross-bar at five-ten,
and won the event and his white B! Mr. T. Haviland Hicks, Sr., overjoyed
at his son's achievement, had sent him a generous check, which the youth
much needed, and had promised to be present at the annual Athletic
Association Meeting, at Commencement, when the B's were awarded
deserving athletes, which caused Hicks as much joy as the pink slip.
With his final study sprint for the Senior Finals, his duties as
team-manager of the baseball nine, his preparations for Commencement, his
social duties at the Junior Prom., and multifarious other details
coincident to graduation, the heedless Hicks had not found time to be
sorrowful at the knowledge that it soon would end, forever, that he must
say "Farewell, Alma Mater," and leave the campus and corridors of old
Bannister; yet soon even Hicks' ebullient spirits must fail, for
Commencement was a trifle over a week off.
"Hicks, you lovable, heedless, irrepressible wretch," said Big Butch,
affectionately, as the two class-mates thrilled at the scene. "Does it
penetrate that shrapnel-proof concrete dome of yours that the Ballard game
tomorrow is the final athletic contest of my, and likewise your, campus
career at old Bannister?"
"Similar thoughts has smote my colossal intellect, Butch!" responded the
bean-pole Hicks, gladsomely. "But--why seek to overshadow this joyous scene
with somber reflections? You-should-worry. You have annexed sufficient B's,
were they different, to make up an alphabet. You've won your letter on
gridiron, track, and baseball field, and you've been team-captain of
everything twice! Why, therefore, sheddest thou them crocodile tears?"
"Not for myself, thou sunny-souled idler!" announced Butch, generously,
"But for _thee_! I prithee, since you pritheed me a few moments hence, let
that so-called colossal intellect of yours stride back along the corridors
of Time, until it reaches a certain day toward the close of our Freshman
year. Remember, you had made a hilarious failure of every athletic event
you tried-football, basketball, track, and baseball; you had just made a
tremendous farce of the Freshman-Sophomore track meet, and to me, your
loyal comrade, you uttered these rash words, 'Before I graduate from old
Bannister, I shall have won my B in three branches of sport!'
"I reiterate and repeat, tomorrow's game with Ballard is the last chance
you will have. There is no possibility that you, with your well-known lack
of baseball ability, will get in the game, and--your track B, won in the
high-jump, is the only B you have won! Now, do you still maintain that you
will make good that rash vow?"
"'Where there's a will, there's a way.' 'Never say die.' 'While there's
life, there's hope.' 'Don't give up the ship.' 'Fight to the last ditch.'
'In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as _fail_,'"
quoth the irrepressible Hicks, all in a breath. "As long as there is an
infinitesimal fraction of a chance left, I repeat, just leave it to Hicks!"
"You haven't got a chance in the world!" Butch assured him, consolingly.
"You did manage to get into one football game, for a minute, and you were a
'Varsity player that long. By sticking to it, you have won your track B in
the high-jump, thanks to your grass-hopper build, and we rejoice at your
reward! Your Dad is happy that you've won a B, so why not be sensible, and
cease this ridiculous talk of winning your B in _three_ sports, when you
can see it is preposterously out of the question, absolutely impossible--"
It was not that Butch. Brewster did not _want_ his sunny classmate to win
his B in three sports, or that he would have failed to rejoice at Hicks'
winning the triple honor. Had such a thing seemed within the bounds of
possibility, Butch, big-hearted and loyal, would have been as happy as
Hicks, or his Dad. But what the behemoth athlete became wrathful at was the
obviously lunatical way in which the cheery Hicks, now that his college
years were almost ended, parrot-like repeated, "Oh, just leave it to
Hicks!" when he must know all hope was dead. In truth, T, Haviland Hicks,
Jr., in pretending to maintain still that he would make good the rash
vow of his Freshman year, had no purpose but to arouse his comrade's
indignation; but Butch, serious of nature, believed there really lurked in
Hicks' system some germs of hope.
"We never know, old top!" chuckled Hicks, though he was _sure_ he could
never fulfill that promise, as he had not played three-fourths of a season
on both the football and the baseball teams, "Something may show up at the
last minute, and--"
At that moment, something evidently did show up, on the campus below, for
the enthusiastic students howled in: thunderous chorus, as the "Honk!
Honk!" of a Claxon was heard, "Here he comes! All together, fellows--the
Bannister yell for the nine--then for good old Dan Flannagan!"
As Hicks and Butch watched from the window, old Dan Flannagan's jitney-bus,
to the discordant blaring of a horn, progressed up the driveway, even as it
had done on that night in September, when it transported to the campus
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., and Thor, the Prodigious Prodigy. Amid salvos of
applause from the Bannister youths, and blasts of the Claxon, old Dan
brought "The Dove" to a stop before the Senior Fence, and bowed to the
nine, grinning genially the while.
"The car waits at the door, sir!" spoke T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., touching
his cap after the fashion of an English butler, before seizing a bat-bag,
and his suit-case. "As team manager, I must attempt to force into Skeet
Wigglesworth's dome how he and the five subs, are to travel on the C. N. &
Q., to Eastminster, from Baltimore. Come on, Butch, we're off--"
"You are always off!" commented Butch, good-humoredly, as he seized his
baggage and followed the mosquito-like Hicks from the room, downstairs, and
out on the campus. Here the assembled youths, with yells, cheers, and songs
sandwiched between humorous remarks to Dan Flannagan, watched the thrilling
spectacle of the Gold and Green nine, with the Team Manager and five
substitutes, fifteen in all, squeeze into and atop of Dan Flannagan's
jitney-Ford.
"Let me check you fellows off," said Hicks, importantly, peering into the
jitney, for he, as Team Manager, had to handle the traveling expenses.
"Monty Merriweather, Roddy Perkins, Biff Pemberton. Butch Brewster, Skeet
Wigglesworth, Beef McNaughton, Cherub Challoner, Ichabod Crane, Don
Carterson; that is the regular nine, and are you five subs, present? O. K.
Skeet, climb out here a second."
Little Skeet Wigglesworth, the brilliant short-stop, climbed out with
exceeding difficulty, and facing T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., he saluted in
military fashion. The team manager, consulting a timetable of the C. N.
&.Q. railroad, fixed him with a stern look.
"Skeet," he spoke distinctly, "now, _get this_--myself and eight regulars,
_nine_ in all, will take the 9 P. M. express for Philadelphia, and stay
there all night. Tomorrow, at 8 A. M., we leave Broad Street Station for
Eastminster, arriving at 11 A. M. _Now_ I have a lot of unused mileage on
the C. N. & Q., and I want to use it up before Commencement. So, heed: you
want to go _via_ Baltimore, to see your parents. You take the 9.20 P. M.
express tonight, to Baltimore, and go from that city in the morning, to
Eastminster, on the C. N, & Q.--it's the only road. And take the five subs
with you, to devour the mileage. Now, has that penetrated thy bomb-proof
dome?"
"_Sure;_ you don't have to deliver a Chautauqua lecture, Hicks!" grinned
Skeet. "Say, what time does my train leave Baltimore, in the A.M., for
Eastminster?"
"Let's see." T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., handing the mileage-books to the
shortstop, focused his intellect on the C. N. & Q. timetable. "Oh, yes--you
leave Union Station, Baltimore, at 7:30 A.M., arriving at Eastminster at
noon; _it is the only train, you can get,_ to make it in time for the game,
so remember the hour--7.30 A.M.! Here, stuff the timetable in your pocket."
In a few moments, the team and substitutes had been jammed into old Dan
Flannagan's jitney, and the Bannister youths on the campus concentrated
their interest on the sunny Hicks, who, grinning _à la_ Cheshire cat,
climbed atop of "The Dove," which old Dan was having as much trouble to
start as he had experienced for over twenty years with the late Lord
Nelson, his defunct quadruped. Seeing Hicks abstract a Louisville
Slugger from the bat-bag, the students roared facetious remarks at the
irrepressible youth:
"Home-run Hicks--he made a home-run--_on a strike-out_!"--"Put Hicks in
the game, Captain Butch--he will win it."--"Watch Hicks--he'll pull
some _bonehead_ play!"--"Bring home the Championship, but--lose Hicks
somewhere!"
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., as the battered engine of the jit. yielded to
old Dan's cranking, and kindly consented to start, surveyed the yelling
students, seized a bat, and struck an attitude which he fatuously believed
was that of Ty Cobb, about to make a hit; taking advantage of a lull in the
tumult, the lovable youth howled at the hilarious crowd:
"Just leave it to Hicks! I will win the game and the _Championship_, for my
Alma Mater, and--I'll do it by my headwork!"