man who rescued the newsboy was not the football captain but a
substitute on the second team. We have forgotten his name. Unlike
Corliss of Yale, the Harvard man did not bother to pick up the newsboy.
Instead he seized the street car and threw it for a loss.
* * * * *
The first half was over and Princeton led by a score of 10 to 0. Things
looked blue for Yale. Neither mascot was on hand. Yale was trying to win
with nothing but students. Where was little Jimmy the newsboy? If you
must know he was in the hospital, for he had been run over again. The
boy could not seem to break himself of the habit. Unfortunately he had
picked out the afternoon of the Princeton game when all the Yale players
were much too busy trying to stop Tigers to have any time to interfere
with traffic. It was only an automobile this time and Jimmy escaped with
a mere gash over one eye. Champ, the bull terrier who caused the mixup,
was uninjured. "I'm all right now," Jimmy told the doctor, "honest I
am--can I go--I gotta take Champ out to the game--he's the mascot and
they can't win without him--please, Mister, let me go--I guess they need
us bad out there."
Apparently the crying need of Yale football is not so much a coaching
system as a good leash to keep the mascots from getting run over. Champ
and Jimmy rushed into the locker room just as the big Blue team was
about to trot out for the second half. After that there was nothing to
it. Yale won by a score of 12 to 10. "Curly clapped his hands together,"
writes Mr. Minnigerode in describing the rally, "and kept calling out
'Never mind the signal! Give me the ball' in his plaintive voice"----
This sounds more like Yale football than anything else in the book.
However, it sufficed. Curly made two touchdowns and all the Yale men
went to Mory's and sang "Curly Corliss, Curly Corliss, he will leave old
Harvard scoreless." It is said that a legend is now gaining ground in
New Haven that Yale will not defeat Harvard again until it is led by
some other captain whose name rhymes with "scoreless." The current
captain of the Elis is named Jordan. The only thing that rhymes with is
"scored on."
Still, as Professor Billy Phelps has taught his students to say,
football isn't everything. Perhaps something of Sparta has gone from
Yale, for a few years or forever, but just look at the Yale poets and
novelists all over the place. There is a new kindliness at New Haven.
Take for instance the testimony of the same "Big Year" when it describes
a touching little scene between Curly Corliss, the captain of the Yale
football team, and his room mate as they are revealed in the act of
retiring for the night:
"'Angel!'
"'Yeah,' very sleepily.
"'They all seem to get over it!'
"'Over what?'
"'The fellows who have graduated,' Curly explained. 'I guess they all
feel pretty poor when they leave, but they get over it right away. It's
just like changing into a new suit, I expect.'
"'Yeah, I guess so'....
"'Well, goo' night, little feller'....
"'Goo' night, Teddy.'"
But we do wish Mr. Minnigerode had been a little more explicit and had
told us who tucked them in.
IX
FOR OLD NASSAU
Wadsworth Camp, we find, has done almost as much for Princeton in his
novel, "The Guarded Heights," as Meade Minnigerode has accomplished for
Yale in "The Big Year."
George Morton might never have gone to any college if it had not been
for Sylvia Planter. He was enamored of her from the very beginning when
old Planter engaged him to accompany his daughter on rides, but his
admiration did not become articulate until she fell off her horse. She
seems to have done it extremely well. "He saw her horse refuse," writes
Mr. Camp, "straightening his knees and sliding in the marshy ground. He
watched Sylvia, with an ease and grace nearly unbelievable, somersault
across the hedge and out of sight in the meadow beyond."
It seemed to us that the horse should have received some of the credit
for the ease with which Sylvia shot across the hedge, but young Morton
was much too intent upon the fate of his goddess to have eyes for
anything else. When he found her lying on the ground she was
unconscious, and so he told her of his love. That brought her to and she
called him "You--you--stable boy." And so George decided to go to
college.
His high school preparation had been scant and irregular. He went to
Princeton, and after two months' cramming passed all his examinations.
Football attracted him from the first as a means to the advancement
which he desired. "With surprised eyes," writes our author, "he saw
estates as extravagant as Oakmont, and frequently in better taste.
Little by little he picked up the names of the families that owned them.
He told himself that some day he would enter those places as a guest,
bowed to by such servants as he had been. It was possible, he promised
himself bravely, if only he could win a Yale or a Harvard game."
Perhaps this explains why one meets so few Princeton men socially. Some,
we have found, are occasionally invited to drop in after dinner. These,
we assume, are recruited from the ranks of those Princetonians who have
tied Yale or Harvard or at least held the score down.
Like Mr. Minnigerode, Mr. Camp employs symbolism in his story. In the
Yale novel we had Corliss evidently standing for Coy. Just which
Princeton hero George Morton represents we are not prepared to say. In
fact, the only Princeton name which comes to mind at the moment is that
of Big Bill Edwards who used to sit in the Customs House and throw them
all for a loss. Morton can hardly be intended for Edwards because it
seems unlikely that anybody would ever have engaged Big Bill to ride
horses; no, not even to break them. A little further on, however, we are
introduced to the Princeton coach, a certain Mr. Stringham. Here, to be
sure, identification is easy. Stringham, we haven't a doubt, is Roper.
We could wish Mr. Camp had been more subtle. He might, for instance,
have called him Cordier.
In some respects Morton proved an even better football player than
Corliss. He did not score any greater number of touchdowns, but he had
more of an air with him. Thus, in the account of the Harvard game it is
recorded: "Then, with his interference blocked and tumbling, George
yielded to his old habit and slipped off to one side at a hazard. The
enemy's secondary defense had been drawing in, there was no one near
enough to stop him within those ten yards and he went over for a
touchdown and casually kicked the goal."
Eventually, George Morton did get asked to all the better houses, but
still Sylvia spurned him. "Go away and don't bother me," was the usual
form of her replies to his ardent words of wooing. Naturally he knew
that he had her on the run. A man who had taken more than one straight
arm squarely in the face during the course of his football career was
not to be rebuffed by a slip of a girl.
The war delayed matters for a time, and George went and was good at that
too. He was a major before he left Plattsburgh. For a time we feared
that he was in danger of becoming a snob, but the great democratizing
forces of the conflict carried him into the current. One of the most
thrilling chapters in the book tells how he exposed his life under very
heavy fire to go forward and rescue an American who turned out to be a
Yale man.
There was no stopping George Morton. In the end he wore Sylvia down.
Nothing else could be expected from such a man. German machine guns and
heavy artillery had failed to stop him and he had even hit the Harvard
line, upon occasion, without losing a yard.
His head was hard and he could not take a hint. In the end Sylvia just
had to marry him. Her right hand swing was not good enough. "As in a
dream he went to her, and her curved lips moved beneath his, but he
pressed them closer so that she couldn't speak; for he felt encircling
them in a breathless embrace, as his arms held her, something thrilling
and rudimentary that neither of them had experienced before----"
And as we read the further details of the love scene it seemed to us
that George Morton had made a most fortunate choice when he decided to
go to Princeton. His football experience stood him in good stead in his
love-making, for he had been trained with an eleven which tackled around
the neck.
X
MR. DEMPSEY'S FIVE-FOOT SHELF
It is hardly fair to expect Jack Dempsey to take literature very
seriously. How, for instance, can he afford to pay much attention to
George Bernard Shaw who declared just before the fight that Carpentier
could not lose and ought to be quoted at odds of fifty to one? From the
point of view of Dempsey, then, creative evolution, the superman and all
the rest, are the merest moonshine. He might well take the position that
since Mr. Shaw was so palpably wrong about the outcome of the fight two
days before it happened, it scarcely behooves anybody to pay much
attention to his predictions as to the fate of the world and mankind two
thousand years hence.
Whatever the reason, Jack Dempsey does not read George Bernard Shaw
much. But he has heard of him. When some reporter came to Dempsey a day
or so before the fight and told him that Shaw had fixed fifty to one as
the proper odds on Carpentier, the champion made no comment. The
newspaper gossiper, disappointed of his sensation, asked if Dempsey had
ever heard of Shaw and the fighter stoutly maintained that he had. The
examination went no further but it is fair to assume that Dempsey did
know the great British sporting writer. It was not remarkable that he
paid no attention to his prediction. Dempsey would not even be moved
much by a prediction from Hughie Fullerton.
In other words literature and life are things divorced in Dempsey's
mind. He does read. The first time we ever saw Dempsey he discussed
books with not a little interest. He was not at his training quarters
when we arrived but his press agent showed us about--a singularly
reverential man this press agent. "This," he said, and he seemed to
lower his voice, "is the bed where Jack Dempsey sleeps." All the Louises
knew better beds and so did Lafayette even when a stranger in a strange
land. Washington himself fared better in the midst of war. Nor can it be
said that there was anything very compelling about the room in which
Dempsey slept. It had air but not much distinction. There were just two
pictures on the wall. One represented a heavy surf upon an indeterminate
but rather rockbound coast and the other showed a lady asleep with
cupids hovering about her bed. Although the thought is erotic the artist
had removed all that in the execution.
Much more striking was the fact that upon a chair beside the bed of
Dempsey lay a couple of books and a magazine. It was not _The Bookman_
but _Photo Play_. The books were "The Czar's Spy" by William Le Queux,
"The Spoilers" by Rex Beach, and at least one other Western novel which
we have unfortunately forgotten. It was, as we remember it, the Luck of
the Lazy Something or Other. The press agent said that Jack read quite a
little and pointed to the reading light which had been strung over his
bed. He then went on to show us the clothes closet and the bureau of
the champion to prove that he was no slave to fashion. We can testify
that only one pair of shoes in the room had gray suede tops. Then we saw
the kitchen and were done.
There had been awe in the tones of the conductor from the beginning.
"Jack's going to have roast lamb for dinner to-night," he announced in
an awful hush. Even as we went out he could not resist lowering his
voice a little as he said, "This is the hat rack. This is where the
champion puts his hat." We had gone only fifty yards away from the house
when a big brown limousine drew up. "That," said the press agent, and
this time we feared he was going to die, "is Jack Dempsey himself."
The preparation had been so similar to the first act of "Enter Madame"
that we expected temperament and gesture from the star. He put us wholly
at ease by being much more frightened than any one in the visiting
party. As somebody has said somewhere, "Any mouse can make this elephant
squeal." Jack Dempsey is decidedly a timid man and we found later that
he was a gentle one. He answered, "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," at first.
If we had his back and shoulders we'd have a civil word for no man. By
and by he grew a little more at ease and somebody asked him what he
read. He was not particularly strong on the names of books and he always
forgot the author, which detracts somewhat from this article as a guide
for readers. There were almost three hundred books at his disposal,
since his training quarters had once been an aviation camp. These were
the books of the fliers. Practically all the popular novelists and short
story writers were represented. We remember seeing several titles by
Mary Roberts Rinehart, Irvin Cobb, Zane Grey, Rupert Hughes, and Rex
Beach. Older books were scarce. The only one we noticed was "A Tale of
Two Cities." This Dempsey had not read. Perhaps Jack Kearns advised
against it on account of the possible disturbing psychological effects
of the chapter with all the counting.
Dempsey said he had devoted most of his time to Western novels. When
questioned he admitted that he did not altogether surrender himself to
them. "I was a cowboy once for a while," he said. "There's a lot of
hokum in those books." But when pressed as to what he really liked his
face did light up and he even remembered the name of the book. "There
was one book I've been reading," he burst out; "it's a fine book. It's
called 'The Czar's Spy.'"
"Perhaps," suggested Ruth Hale of the visiting party, "a grand duke
would say there was a lot of hokum in that."
Dempsey was not to be deterred by any such higher criticism. Never
having been a grand duke, he did not worry about the accuracy of the
story. It was in a field far apart from life. That we gathered was his
idea of the proper field for fiction. In life Dempsey is a stern
realist. It is only in reading that he is romantic. A more
impressionable man would have been disturbed by the air of secrecy which
surrounded the camp of Carpentier. That never worried Dempsey. He
prepared himself and never thought up contingencies. He did not even
like to talk fight. None of us drew him out much about boxing. Somebody
told him that Jim Corbett had reported that when he first met Carpentier
he had been vastly tempted to make a feint at the Frenchman to see
whether or not he would fall into a proper attitude of defense.
"Yes," giggled Dempsey, "and it would have been funny if Carp had busted
him one on the chin." This seemed to him an extraordinary humorous
conceit and he kept chuckling over it every now and then. While he was
in this good humor somebody sounded him out as to what he would do if he
lost; or rather the comment was made that an old time fighter, once a
champion, was now coming back to the ring and had declared that he was
as good as he ever was.
"Why shouldn't he?" said Dempsey just a little sharply. "Nobody wants to
see a man that says he isn't as good as he used to be."
"Would you say that?" he was asked.
"Well," said Dempsey, and this time he reflected a little, "it would all
depend on how I was fixed. If I needed the money I would. I'd use all
the old alibis."
We liked that frankness and we liked Dempsey again when somebody wanted
to know how he could possibly say anything in the ring during the fight
to "get the goat of Carpentier." "We ain't nearly well enough acquainted
for that," said Dempsey and we gathered that he was of the opinion that
you must know a man pretty well before you can insult him. The champion
is not a man to whom one would look for telling rejoinders, though he
has needed them often enough in the last year and a half. Criticism has
hurt him, for he is not insensitive. He is merely inarticulate. This
must have been the reason which prompted some sporting writers to feel
that he would come into the ring whipped and down from the fact that he
had been able to make no reply to all the charges brought against him.
It did not work out that way. Dempsey did have a means of expression and
he used it. There is no logic in force and yet a man can exclaim "Is
that so!" with his fists. Dempsey said it. If we may be allowed to
stretch a point it might even be hazarded that the champion's motto is
"Say it with cauliflowers."
As the Freudians have it, fighting is his "escape." Decidedly, he is a
man with an inferiority complex. But for his boxing skill he would need
literature badly. As it is, he does not need to read about hair-breadth
escapes. He has them, such as in the second round of the fight on
Boyle's Thirty Acres.
In summing up, we can only add that as yet literature has had no large
effect upon the life of Jack Dempsey.
XI
SPORT FOR ART'S SAKE
For years we had been hearing about moral victories and at last we saw
one. This is not intended as an excuse for the fact that we said before
the fight that Carpentier would beat Dempsey. We erred with Bernard
Shaw. The surprising revelation which came to us on this July afternoon
was that a thing may be done well enough to make victory entirely
secondary. We have all heard, of course, of sport for sport's sake but
Georges Carpentier established a still more glamorous ideal. Sport for
art's sake was what he showed us in the big wooden saucer over on
Boyle's dirty acres.
It was the finest tragic performance in the lives of ninety thousand
persons. We hope that Professor George Pierce Baker sent his class in
dramatic composition. We will be disappointed if Eugene O'Neill, the
white hope of the American drama, was not there. Here for once was a
laboratory demonstration of life. None of the crowds in Greece who went
to somewhat more beautiful stadiums in search of Euripides ever saw the
spirit of tragedy more truly presented. And we will wager that Euripides
was not able to lift his crowd up upon its hind legs into a concerted
shout of "Medea! Medea! Medea!" as Carpentier moved the fight fans over
in Jersey City in the second round. In fact it is our contention that
the fight between Dempsey and Carpentier was the most inspiring
spectacle which America has seen in a generation.
Personally we would go further back than that. We would not accept a
ticket for David and Goliath as a substitute. We remember that in that
instance the little man won, but it was a spectacle less fine in
artistry from the fact that it was less true to life. The tradition that
Jack goes up the beanstalk and kills his giant, and that Little Red
Ridinghood has the better of the wolf, and many other stories are
limited in their inspirational quality by the fact that they are not
true. They are stories that man has invented to console himself on
winter's evenings for the fact that he is small and the universe is
large. Carpentier showed us something far more thrilling. All of us who
watched him know now that man cannot beat down fate, no matter how much
his will may flame, but he can rock it back upon its heels when he puts
all his heart and his shoulders into a blow.
That is what happened in the second round. Carpentier landed his
straight right upon Dempsey's jaw and the champion, who was edging in
toward him, shot back and then swayed forward. Dempsey's hands dropped
to his side. He was an open target. Carpentier swung a terrific right
hand uppercut and missed. Dempsey fell into a clinch and held on until
his head cleared. He kept close to Carpentier during the rest of the
fight and wore him down with body blows during the infighting. We know
of course that when the first prehistoric creature crawled out of the
ooze up to the beaches (see "The Outline of History" by H. G. Wells,
some place in the first volume, just a couple of pages after that
picture of the big lizard) it was already settled that Carpentier was
going to miss that uppercut. And naturally it was inevitable that he
should have the worst of it at infighting. Fate gets us all in the
clinches, but Eugene O'Neill and all our young writers of tragedy make a
great mistake if they think that the poignancy of the fate of man lies
in the fact that he is weak, pitiful and helpless. The tragedy of life
is not that man loses but that he almost wins. Or, if you are intent on
pointing out that his downfall is inevitable, that at least he completes
the gesture of being on the eve of victory.
For just eleven seconds on the afternoon of July 2 we felt that we were
at the threshold of a miracle. There was such flash and power in the
right hand thrust of Carpentier's that we believed Dempsey would go
down, and that fate would go with him and all the plans laid out in the
days of the oozy friends of Mr. Wells. No sooner were the men in the
ring together than it seemed just as certain that Dempsey would win as
that the sun would come up on the morning of July 3. By and by we were
not so sure about the sun. It might be down, we thought, and also out.
It was included in the scope of Carpentier's punch, we feared. No, we
did not exactly fear it. We respect the regularity of the universe by
which we live, but we do not love it. If the blow had been as
devastating as we first believed, we should have counted the world well
lost.
Great circumstances produce great actors. History is largely concerned
with arranging good entrances for people; and later exits not always
quite so good. Carpentier played his part perfectly down to the last
side. People who saw him just as he came before the crowd reported that
he was pitifully nervous, drawn, haggard. It was the traditional and
becoming nervousness of the actor just before a great performance. It
was gone the instant Carpentier came in sight of his ninety thousand.
His head was back and his eyes and his smile flamed as he crawled
through the ropes. And he gave some curious flick to his bathrobe as he
turned to meet the applause. Until that very moment we had been for
Dempsey, but suddenly we found ourself up on our feet making silly
noises. We shouted "Carpentier! Carpentier! Carpentier!" and forgot even
to be ashamed of our pronunciation. He held his hands up over his head
and turned until the whole arena, including the five-dollar seats, had
come within the scope of his smile.
Dempsey came in a minute later and we could not cheer, although we liked
him. It would have been like cheering for Niagara Falls at the moment
somebody was about to go over in a barrel. Actually there is a
difference of sixteen pounds between the two men, which is large enough,
but it seemed that afternoon as if it might have been a hundred. And we
knew for the first time that a man may smile and smile and be an
underdog.
We resented at once the law of gravity, the Malthusian theory and the
fact that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.
Everything scientific, exact, and inevitable was distasteful. We wanted
the man with the curves to win. It seemed impossible throughout the
first round. Carpentier was first out of his corner and landed the first
blow, a light but stinging left to the face. Then Dempsey closed in and
even the people who paid only thirty dollars for their seats could hear
the thump, thump of his short hooks as they beat upon the narrow stomach
of Carpentier. The challenger was only too evidently tired when the
round ended.
Then came the second and, after a moment of fiddling about, he shot his
right hand to the jaw. Carpentier did it again, a second time, and this
was the blow perfected by a life time of training. The time was perfect,
the aim was perfect, every ounce of strength was in it. It was the blow
which had downed Bombardier Wells, and Joe Beckett. It rocked Dempsey to
his heels, but it broke Carpentier's hand. His best was not enough.
There was an earthquake in Philistia but then out came the signs
"Business as usual!" and Dempsey began to pound Carpentier in the
stomach.
The challenger faded quickly in the third round, and in the fourth the
end came. We all suffered when he went down the first time, but he was
up again, and the second time was much worse. It was in this knockdown
that his head sagged suddenly, after he struck the floor, and fell back
upon the canvas. He was conscious and his legs moved a little, but they
would not obey him. A gorgeous human will had been beaten down to a
point where it would no longer function.