But this was not all, for on the afternoon when the trials took place,—in the big, dim room of empty seats, with a few judges scattered lonesomely about,—as I took my turn and was walking to the platform, I felt a hearty clap on the shoulder and heard Ellis whisper, “Good luck to you, Priddy!” exactly the way in which he had encouraged his men in the big football contests. I walked to the platform thrilled through by the magnificence of Ellis’ sporting spirit. I felt that if any other man won, it should be Ellis.
I did not do well with my oration. I was marked down. Ellis’ turn came. I watched him, admiringly, as he strode to the platform in his masterful way. His gestures, over which we had worked with patience, were still undisciplined, and at times his voice thundered too much. But he came down with the consciousness of having done his best. He was declared eligible for the final contest.
Later, when the final contest took place, Ellis, who had gone into it with the loftiest ideal of all the contestants, had the thrill of knowing that he was the winner of the prize. He had won both sides of the medal, the athletic and literary.
“At least,” he said to me, in bashful comment on his victory, “I think that some folks will be persuaded that a football man may have some interest in scholarship.”
Garvin, a fellow Senior, illustrates another phase of college life and thought. He was a clever individual and one of the editors of the college newspaper. His “den,” as he loved to term his narrow room in Wise Hall, had been made to resemble as much as possible an editorial sanctum. Galley proofs, daubed black with corrections, revisions and proof marks, had been hung over his desk, as if to forever remind him that the true function of an editor is revision, as it is the true function of life. Original artists’ drawings, in charcoal, pen and ink and pencil, were mixed in with Gibson Girl sketches on the walls. Three samples of “the worst contributions ever sent into the paper” were framed in passe partout and hung over the brick of the fireplace where the curious might read them; one was a Freshman poem whose theme had never been understood and for the interpretation of which Garvin had a standing offer of a box of cigars. The “poem” said something about “the ancient cow, sitting munchingly on the steep broadside of green, fertile country,” and then went on to irrelevantly bring in various other cattle, scenes, and people in such an unexplained matter-of-fact way that the mind was in a whirl at the end. The other two contributions were attempts at stories, and judged from the first pages of manuscript exhibited, ended in being nothing more than attempts.
I had visited Garvin to speak on a matter to which I was giving considerable thought at the time: the curious disparagement of scholarship by so many of the students. I had even gone to the pains of having published in Garvin’s paper my undergraduate protest against the universal tendency to despise the “plugger” and to esteem the “grafter”; two terms which marked the antipodes of scholarship. My article, entitled, “On the Spirit of Work in College,” had been printed and followed by a parody, written by an unknown student and entitled: “Priddy Has A Grouch,” in which the writer had openly given all the honors of the college to the student who refrained from seeking a salutatory, vying with his classmates for the valedictory or hastening after academic honors of whatever sort.
“Blatant heresy!” I announced, pointing out the anonymous article.
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Garvin. “I rather like it!”
I regarded him in astonishment for a moment and then protested,
“But think of it, man! Denouncing scholarship! A student in a college denouncing the very charter of the college. It’s incredible: audacious and heretical: undermining the very foundations of the college! And to think that you, an editor, interested in culture and education, support such a paradox. You ought to be tortured in a Smithfield fire or have your thumbs twisted with Inquisition screws!”