Word by word, gesture by gesture, chant by chant, we followed the dismal but dramatic tale from its air of glory and freedom into the darker shadows of dread which Teiresias foretold. Moods of king and queen, of the old men who stood by the temple, of the priest and the shepherd changed slowly and steadily from scoffing to belief, from belief to alarm, from alarm to fear, from fear to resistance, from resistance to submission, from submission to final reparation. Woven into the shudderings of the old men, witnesses of death and grewsome penalties, were the musical whisperings, to keep our minds upon the unseen spirits of the vengeful gods who were directing the grim tragedy until all the sobs that men and women could give were ended, until the last dreg of a tear remained, and until only the merest whisper of a cry could sound in the chambers of a suffering heart!
We went into the night, from it, feeling that our hearts had been smitten heavy blows, that our life had fastened itself to leaden anchors. The terrible reality, the magnificence of Fate, the classic splendor of sufferings in epic girth had been staged before us.
Teiresias’ words hung in the air, everywhere, even under the dark sky outside:
“O miserable reproach! which shall soon
Thunder forth on thee!”
Chapter XXXVIII. How
Ellis, the Captain, Taught me the
Spirit of Contest. I Turn Pamphleteer
on Behalf of Scholarship.
But Find from Garvin that
Scholarship and Education may be
Separate Matters. Account of a
Truly Classic Event, which Makes
the Students Study Color Schemes
and Gives us a Chance to Appear
in Gowns
ONE afternoon I was sitting on the senior fence, watching two fraternity teams wage a contest in baseball, when I saw Ellis, the football captain approaching, with his finger upraised to draw my attention.
Ellis was an impressive fellow with his towering shoulders, oak-like limbs, and ruddy cheeks. In his flannels, tan oxfords, and varsity cap he spelled in large capitals, “Exercise.” For Ellis was known preëminently, in the athletic world, as one of the year’s gods who sit on the pinnacle of Olympus, the revered of freshmen, the applauded of sophomores, and the envied of fellow seniors. By the newspapers he was heralded as the best player of football in his position in all America. His name, through the years of his playing, when he appeared with nose guard and canvas suit, had been on the lips of admiring multitudes. His photographs, showing him catching a football, or in pose for a scramble, had been spread on many city papers that year.
In the college, more than in the outside world, Ellis’ fame had won the highest respect. He was the marked man: marked for friendships, for class honors, and for the respect of the faculty. A freshman, given the merest smile or word by Ellis, immediately ran to his room and wrote a burning letter about it to his mother or his sister. The fraternities and senior societies had vied with one another to secure him for a comrade. He was the college “boss” in a good sense, for if a group of excited students broke the public peace, by an unruly demonstration before the town jail, where one of the students had been immolated for throwing a snowball at the village justice, it was Ellis who jumped on a flour barrel, which he had ordered brought from the back door of a nearby grocery, and at a word, commanded the incipient riot to break up; which it did without a murmur.
“Take a walk, Priddy?” asked Ellis, as he drew near.