"And it has been reported that the fellow has traveled all over the world," said Horner. "His rooms are decorated with all sorts of strange weapons, trophies and skins of wild animals, which it is said he gathered in his travels."
"Bah!" sneered Thornton. "I have my doubts about his ever being at Oxford, and I take no stock at all in the rest of that guff. It is barely possible that he may have been over to England, but the yarn about his having traveled in South America, Africa and Europe, is the biggest sort of rot."
"Well, let it go as rot," said Horner; "you must acknowledge that he did something most astonishing with that freshman crew. We did not have the least idea in the world that they could beat us, but we were not in the race on the home stretch."
"Oh, we thought we had a soft thing, that's all. If we'd dreamed we had a hard race coming, we'd won all right."
"That may be, but I am not so sure. Still, if Merriwell could do so much with a lot of freshmen, what might not be done if the same methods were used with the 'varsity crew?"
"Bah!" cried Thornton again. "That sort of rot makes me sick! Bob Collingwood has his own ideas, and he will not accept suggestions from any one, although I think he was a fool to throw down Flemming for Merriwell. Flem did great work on the football team, and he is in condition to make a special effort at rowing this spring, while Merriwell is obliged to play ball as well."
"I don't see how Merriwell does so many things and does them so well," confessed Tad Horner.
"Oh, he is one of the chaps who has the nerve to
try anything, and will stumble through anything after a fashion. Nine times out of ten those fellows are never heard from after they leave college. The fellow who takes some branch of athletics at college and sticks to it is likely to select some line of business when he has graduated, and stick to that. He is not diving into everything, and making a success of nothing."