POETRY AND POLITICS
“I’ve got that other verse,” announced Dan, tossing his pencil aside
and leaning back in his chair.
“I wondered what awful deed you were doing,” said Alf. “Let’s hear it.”
They were in 7 Dudley, a cozy, comfortable room on the first floor of
the dormitory. The hosts, Alf and Tom, were stretched out on the window
seat, their legs apparently inextricably mixed. Dan was seated at the
table where, for the past ten minutes, he had been scribbling and
erasing. Supper had been over for an hour and they had discussed the
events of the day to their hearts’ content. The football game with St.
John’s had been played and won in two fifteen-minute halves and each of
the three was comfortably weary and happy. The contest had not been a
hard one, but the weather had been warm and, to use Tom’s expression,
had “taken the starch out of a fellow.” The score, 11 to 0, wasn’t
anything to boast of, and there had been discouraging features, but it
was over with now and there was no more practice until Monday afternoon
and this was no time to worry. Tom stretched his arms with a sigh of
lazy contentment, kicked Alf in the shins, apologized sleepily and
waited for Dan to read his effusion. Dan held the sheet to the light,
frowned and hesitated.
“I don’t believe it’s quite as good as the other one,” he said
apologetically.
“Who said the other was good?” asked Alf.
“You did.”
“Shut up and let him read it,” growled Tom. “Go ahead, Dan.”
“We-ell, here it is:
“‘All together! Cheer on cheer!
Victory is ours to-day!
Raise your voices loud and clear!
Yardley pluck has won the fray!
See, the vanquished foeman quails,
All his vaunted courage fails!
Flaunt the blue that never pales,
Fighting for old Yardley!’”
“That’s all right,” said Tom. “What’s the matter with it?”
“What are foeman quails?” asked Alf. “Besides, the plural of quail is
quail and not quails.”
“Go to thunder!”
“And there’s another thing, Dan. I don’t just like that line about
lifting our voices. It suggests exertion. Now, I might lift my voice
without much trouble, but just imagine Tom trying to lift that heavy
croak of his! He’d break his back at it! Why don’t you――――”
“You’re an idiot,” said Dan good-naturedly.
“Let’s sing it,” suggested Alf. “How’s the tune go? That’s it! All
together, now!”
They sang it several times, until they had learned the words, much to
the distress of neighbors who protested with groans and howls. Then
they sang both verses.
“That’s a mighty good song,” announced Tom at last, pausing for breath.
“It’s better than anything we’ve had. You ought to get somebody to
write down the tune, though, before Alf changes it entirely. Can you do
it, Dan?”
“No, I wish I could.”
“Take it to Paul Rand,” said Alf. “He’s a regular dabster at music. The
only criticism I have to make, Dan, is that your verses lack ginger.
You’ve got some awfully fine words in them, but they’re――well, sort of
flabby. I’ll bet I could write a verse to that song that would wake you
up a bit. Who’s got a pencil?”
He sat up and disentangled his legs.
“Lie down,” protested Tom. “Hide the pencils, Dan.”
But Alf went over to the table and dumped Dan out of his seat.
“Everyone very quiet now, please, while the muse gets busy. I feel the
spell coming on.”
Dan retired to the window seat, where he and Tom uttered gibes while
Alf’s pencil scratched on the paper.
“Doesn’t he remind you of Tennyson――not?” inquired Tom.
“Looks to me more like Milton,” Dan opined thoughtfully.
“I’ll bet that was a dandy line! Alf, you aren’t holding your mouth
quite right. A little more curl on the left, please.”
“Bright and sparkling, showing the teeth,” advised Dan.
But Alf wrote on, supremely indifferent to interruptions, and at last
dropped his pencil with a smile of triumph.
“Just you listen to this!” he cried.
“Go head,” said Tom, “but please wave your hand when you come to a
rhyme so we’ll know it.”
“Subside, brute! Listen:
“‘Yell like thunder! Cheer on cheer!
Kill the enemy quite dead!
Punch his nose and bite his ear,
Kick him on his little head!
We will give old Broadwood fits,
Frighten her out of her wits!
We will chew her all to bits,
Fighting for old Yardley!’”
“Now, that’s something like, isn’t it? Has go and ginger to it, what?”
“Wonderful!” laughed Dan. “Such pretty thoughts!”
“Just full of quaint and cheerful sentiments!” said Tom. “Sounds like
an automobile accident.”
“We’ll have that for the third verse,” said Alf, grinning. “But I must
have credit for it. ‘First two verses by Dan Vinton; last verse by Alf
Loring; all rights reserved.’”
“‘Copyrighted in New Jersey and all foreign countries,’” added Dan.
“Why don’t you send that to the _Scholiast_, Alf. It’s better than most
of the poetry they print.”
“Well, I think myself,” responded Alf modestly, “that it has more
feeling and delicacy. Say, where’s Little Geraldine to-night?”
“With Arthur Thompson, I guess,” answered Dan. “They’re getting pretty
thick these days.”
“You guess!” said Alf severely. “What sort of a guardian are you, I’d
like to know. What do you suppose John T. Pennimore would say if he
knew that you had let the child out of your sight without being certain
where he is?”
“Is he still worried about this morning?” asked Tom.
“I think so, but I tell him that no one will believe Hiltz.”
“By the way,” said Alf, squeezing himself onto the seat between them,
“I’ve found out that Hiltz is expecting to get on the Second Class
Admission Committee again, he and Thompson both. Of course we don’t
have to worry about Thompson, but if we want to get Gerald into
Cambridge this year it’s up to you, Dan, to beat Hiltz out for the
committee.”
“What’ll I have to do?”
“Just let the fellows in the Second know that you’re after the place,
that’s all. It’s simple enough, and you ought not have much trouble
beating Jake Hiltz. If you don’t, though, he will blackball Gerald as
sure as anything, especially after what happened to-day, and, as you
know, one blackball will keep him out. And after that there’s nothing
left for him but an ignominious admission to Oxford.”
Tom, the only Oxford Society man of the three, grunted sarcastically.
“All right,” Dan agreed. “I’ll start my campaign. I suppose the thing
to do is to see all the fellows I know and get them to promise to vote
for me. When does the election come off?”
“Well, the classes elect committee members about the first of November;
I don’t know just what the date is, but we can find out. Then the
society election comes off the first Wednesday after the second Monday
in the new moon, or something idiotic like that; anyhow, it’s about the
twenty-third of November. Let’s go over to Cambridge and find out all
about it. Besides, there’ll be a lot of fellows there and you can get
in your work.”
“All right. Better come along, Tom.”
“I’m particular where I go,” muttered Tom sleepily. Alf threw a book at
him playfully and escaped before Tom could make reprisal.
Secret societies are tabooed at Yardley, although now and again one
gets hints of mysterious meetings behind draped transoms at dead o’
night. But both faculty and undergraduate sentiment is opposed to such
things and they soon die of inanition. The two recognized societies
are Cambridge and Oxford. They are both debating clubs, although of
recent years they have become rather more social than anything else.
At one time or another every student has the opportunity to join one
or other of the societies, but to be invited to each is considered
something of an honor. This had happened to Gerald Pennimore the
preceding spring, when Alf and Dan had tried to get him into Cambridge,
and Tom, supported by a handful of influential friends, had offered
Gerald the hospitality of Oxford. Gerald had chosen Cambridge, but
thanks to Jacob Hiltz, then one of the two Third Class members of the
Admission Committee, he had received one blackball, sufficient to
bar him out. Dan and Alf had thereupon made up their minds to secure
Gerald’s election this fall, and in order to do that it was necessary
to defeat Hiltz for the Admission Committee, and Dan had agreed to run
against him.
The rooms of the rival societies were on the top floor of Oxford Hall.
Each was large and comfortably furnished, with plenty of cushioned
window seats and easy chairs, tables for writing and good reference
libraries. Many fellows made use of the rooms during the day to study
in between recitations, while in the evenings they were pretty certain
to be well filled with members reading or playing chess, checkers,
dominoes, or cards. To-night, when Dan and Alf entered Cambridge, the
weekly debate had just been finished and the thirty or forty fellows
present were moving their chairs back against the walls, preparatory
to social diversions. A few minutes later they had formed a group in a
corner of the room with Paul Rand and Joe Chambers. Both were seniors
and prominent in Cambridge affairs, Chambers being president and Rand
secretary. Chambers was editor-in-chief of the school weekly, the
_Scholiast_, while Rand was manager of the basket-ball team. Chambers
soon supplied the information they desired as to election dates.
“Dan’s a candidate for the Second Class Admission Committee,” explained
Alf. “By the way, who are the members in your class, Paul?”
“Derrick and I,” answered Rand.
“That’s all right, then. We want to get young Pennimore in next month.
You haven’t anything against him, I suppose?”
“Not a thing.”
“And how about you, Joe?”
“Same here,” replied Chambers. He was a tall, intellectual-looking
youth who wore glasses and was popularly believed to be an embryo
great journalist.
“Good enough,” said Alf. “You’d better get busy, Dan, and hunt up some
of your class fellows and get them pledged. There’s Walpole over there;
tackle him.”
But Walpole was very sorry and had just promised Hiltz to vote for him.
“Wish I had known before, Dan,” he said. “I’d rather stood for you if
you’d told me. I didn’t know you were running.”
It didn’t take Dan long to discover that Hiltz had been busy, for
everyone of the dozen or so Second Classmen he spoke to had been
approached by his adversary. A few only had not definitely promised
their support and these willingly pledged their votes to Dan. Dan went
back to the group in the corner.
“Say, Paul, how many Second Class fellows are there in Cambridge?”
“I can tell you in a minute.” Rand went to his desk, unlocked a drawer
and looked over the membership list. “Twenty-nine,” he announced,
returning with the list in his hand. “Want to get the names?”
“Yes,” said Dan, “that’s a bully idea. Read them out to me, will you?”
So Paul read and Dan jotted them down on a piece of paper. When he
had finished he said: “I’ve seen eleven to-night and seven of them are
promised to Hiltz. If that ratio works out with the rest I’ll get only
about ten votes.” He looked doubtfully at Alf.
“I don’t believe Hiltz has seen them all,” answered Alf. “What you want
to do is to get busy right away. There’s Thompson now. Talk to him,
Dan.”
Arthur Thompson had just entered with Gerald in tow and Dan crossed
over to them.
“Hello, Thompson, I want to speak to you a minute. This is your first
visit this year, isn’t it, Gerald?”
“Yes, Arthur invited me up. Is the debate over?”
“Yes, ten minutes ago. Alf’s over there in the corner, with Paul and
Joe Chambers. I want to speak to Thompson just a second.”
Gerald wandered away toward the group and Dan plunged into his subject.
“I say, Thompson, you’re up for Admission Committee, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I suppose you don’t vote for yourself, do you?”
“Hardly,” laughed Arthur. “It’s customary to vote for the other
candidate and he votes for you. It amounts to the same thing, I
suppose.”
“Any objection to voting for me?”
“You? You’re not up, are you?”
“Yes, and I’m up to beat Jake Hiltz. We want to get Gerald through this
time and Hiltz will down him as sure as fate. He did last spring, you
know, and he’s bound to now after what happened this morning.”
“That’s so. All right, I’ll vote for you, Vinton. But I’m mighty afraid
that Hiltz has the thing cinched. I’d withdraw and give you my votes,
but that wouldn’t defeat Hiltz. I wish it would. But I’ll help you all
I can.”
“Will you? Then just look at this list and see what fellows you think
you can influence.”
Arthur looked it over. Then he took out his pen and copied half a dozen
of the names on the back of an envelope. “I’ll look after these,” he
said in a businesslike way, “the first thing in the morning. Is Jake
here to-night?”
“He was before the debate, but he’s gone. Maybe he’s canvassing now. I
wonder――――”
“What?”
“I wonder why he’s so anxious to be reëlected, Thompson.”
“That’s so! He hasn’t said a thing about it to me. It looks as though
he had just started in to-day, doesn’t it? Do you suppose――――”
“That he wants to get back so as to defeat Gerald again? I wouldn’t be
a bit surprised. It certainly looks that way. I’ve spoken to eleven
fellows here this evening and they all said that Hiltz had been after
them before the debate.”
“Then that’s just what he’s up to, Vinton! You heard about the protest
he made against Gerald?”
“Yes; just one of his lies, of course.”
“Yes, Gerald doesn’t cheat. And I guess he knows that Ryan isn’t likely
to believe him and thinks he will get revenge in this way. Well, we’ll
do our best to beat him, Vinton. But we’ve got to look sharp. He’s
pretty foxy, Jake is.”
“And he’s got seven fellows pledged to him already,” said Dan
frowningly.
“How about you?” asked Arthur.
“Five, counting you.”
“That’s not so bad! I’ll come around to-morrow after I’ve seen some
of these chaps and let you know what I’ve done. You’ll have to have
fifteen votes, won’t you? Well, there’s three on this list that I’m
sure you can count on, and that makes eight. And if Jake hasn’t got
ahead of us the other seven won’t be hard to find.”
“No, but I’m awfully afraid he has,” said Dan gloomily.
“We’ll know in the morning,” answered Arthur cheerfully. “I’ll drop
around to your room in the afternoon, probably. So long.”