Winning His "W": A Story of Freshman Year at College

by Everett T. Tomlinson

"Well, to me it's like this. In every fellow there's a good side and a bad side. Sort of a Doctor Jekyl and Mr. Hyde in every one of us. I heard the other day in our laboratory of a man who had taken and grafted one part of the body of an insect on the body of another. He tried it both on the chrysalis and on an insect too. I understood that he took the pupa of a spider and by very careful work grafted upon it the pupa of a fly. Think of what that monstrosity must have been when it passed out from the chrysalis and became a full-fledged living being. One part of it trying to get away from the other. One wanting to fly and the other to hide. One part wanting to feed on flies and the other part in mortal terror of all spiders."

"Was that really so?" inquired Will deeply interested.

"I didn't see it myself, but it was told over in the biological laboratory and I don't think there was any question about it. It struck me that it was just the way some of us seem to be built, a sort of a spider and fly combination and not the ordinary combination either, when the fly is usually inside of the spider and very soon a part of his majesty. And yet when you've told all that you know, it's a sort of monstrosity after all, and that the truth is that a fellow really is his best self if he'll only give that part half a chance. That's why I say the way of the transgressor is hard and not easy. A fellow is going against the grain of his best side. He throws away his best chances under protest all the while, and he doesn't want to do it either. No, Phelps, I believe if a fellow goes down hill it's like a man dragging a balky horse. It looks easy but it isn't, and he himself is pulling against it all the time."

"I never thought of it in that way before."

"Then on the other hand this very kind of work you're doing now is the sort that stirs your blood. I expect that those fellows who live down in the tropics and about all the work they have to do to feed themselves is to pick a banana off a tree and go through the exertion of peeling it, don't really get half the fun out of life that some of us boys had up on the hillside farms in Vermont. Why, when we'd have to get up winter mornings, with the weather so cold that we'd have to be all the while on the lookout that we didn't freeze our ears or noses, and when we'd have to shovel out the paths through three feet of snow and cut the wood and carry water to the stock, it did seem at times to be a trifle strenuous; but really I think the boys in Vermont get more fun out of life than the poor chaps in the tropics do who plow their fields by just jabbing a hole in the ground with their heel, and when they plant, all they have to do is to just stick a slip in the ground. It's the same way here, Phelps. This sort of thing you're doing is hard, no doubt about that; but it's the sort of thing that really stirs up a live man, after all."

"I'm afraid I'll be all stirred up if we don't get at this work pretty soon," laughed Will, who was nevertheless deeply impressed by the words he had heard from the prospective valedictorian of the senior class. "Why can't we do it all up this morning?" he inquired eagerly.

"All?"

"Oh, I mean all we were planning to do to-day. I'd like to go down to the gym this afternoon and watch the bulletins of the game. I decided not to go, but if I can get my work off that'll be the next best thing; and besides it'll help to pass the time. It's going to be a long day for me."

"All right, I'm agreeable," replied the senior cordially.

Until the hour of noon was rung out by the clock in the tower, Will labored hard. The words of his tutor had been inspiring, but he could not disguise from himself the fact, however, that he had little love for the task. It was simply a determination not to be "downed," as Will expressed it, that led him on and he was holding on doggedly, resolutely, almost blindly, but still he was holding on. About three o'clock in the afternoon the few students who were in town assembled at the telegraph office where messages were to be received from the team at intervals of ten minutes describing the progress of the game. One of the seniors had been selected to read the dispatches and only a few minutes had elapsed after the assembly had gathered before the senior appeared, coming out of the telegraph office and waving aloft the yellow slip. A cheer greeted his appearance but this was followed by a tense silence as he read aloud: