At Good Old Siwash

by George Fitch

When I was at Siwash a class party was the most exciting event in college. For uncertainty and breath-grabbing anxiety they made the football games seem as tame as a church election. Of course everybody can't be a Venus de Milo or an Apollo with a Beveled Ear, as Petey Simmons used to call him. Every class has its middle-aged young ladies, who are attending college to rest up from ten or fifteen years of school-teaching, and its tall young agriculturalists with restless Adam's apples, whose idea of being socially interesting is to sit all evening in the same chair making a noise like one of those $7.78-suit dummies. That's what made the class lotteries so interesting. The plow-chasers drew the prettiest girls in the class and the most accomplished fusser among the fellows usually drew a girl who would make the manager of a beauty parlor utter a sad shriek and throw up his job. Of course every one was bound in honor to take what came out of the hat. Nobody flinched and nobody renigged, but there was a lot of suppressed excitement and well-modulated regret.

I have been reasonably wicked since I left college. Once or twice I have slapped down a silver dollar or thereabout and have watched the little ball roll round and round a pocket that meant a wagon-load of tainted tin for me; and once in a while I have placed five dollars on a pony of uncertain ability and have watched him go from ninth to second before he blew up. But I never got half the heart-ripping suspense out of these pastimes that I did out of a certain few party drawings, when I waited for my name to come out and wondered, while I looked across the hall at the girl section, whether I was going to draw the one girl in the world, any one of four or five mighty interesting runners-up, or the fat little girl in the corner with ropy hair and the general look of a person who had had a bright idea a few years before and had been convalescing from it ever since.

Talk about excitement and consequences! Those drawings kept us on the jump until the parties were pulled off. Generally the proud beauties who had been drawn by the midnight-oil destroyers did not know them, and some one had to steer the said destroyers around to be introduced. What with dragging bashful young chaps out to call and then seeing that they didn't freeze up below the ankles and get sick on the night of the party; and what with teaching them the rudiments of waltzing and giving them pointers on lawn ties; or how to charter a good seaworthy hack in case the girl lived on an unpaved street; and bracing up the fellows who had drawn blanks, and going to call on the blanks we had drawn and getting gloriously snubbed—give me a wall-flower for thorns!—well, it was no cinch to run a class party. But they were grand affairs, just the same, and promoted true fellowship, besides furnishing amusement for the whole college in the off season. And, besides, I always remember them with gratitude for what they did to Frankling.

You know there are two kinds of fussers in college. There is the chap like Petey Simmons, for instance, whose heart was a directory of Siwash girls; and there is the fellow who grabs one girl and stakes out claim boards all around her for the whole four years. That was Frankling's style. He was what we always called a married man. He and Pauline Spencer were the closest corporation in college. They entered school in the same class, and he called on her every Friday night at Browning Hall and took her to every party and lecture and entertainment for the next three and a half years—except, of course, the class parties. It was one of our chief delights to watch Frankling grind his teeth when some lowbrow—as he called them—drew her name. She always had rotten luck—you never saw such luck! Once Ettleson drew her. He was a tall, silent farmer, who wore boots and a look of gloom; and he marched her through a mile of mud to the hall without saying a word, handed her to the reception committee and went over to a corner, where he sat all evening. But that wasn't so bad as the Junior she drew. His name was Slaughter. His father had a dairy at the edge of Jonesville and Slaughter decided that, as the night was cold and rainy, a carriage would be appropriate. So he scrubbed up the milk wagon thoroughly, put a lot of nice, clean straw on the floor, hung a lantern from the top for heat and drove her down to the party in state. She was game and didn't make a murmur, but Frankling made a pale-gray ass of himself. As I said, I never liked Frankling. He had a nasty, sneering way of looking at the whole school, except his own crowd. His father owned the locomotive works and he always went to Europe for his summers. He was one of those unnecessary individuals who are solemnly convinced that if you don't do things just as they do something is lacking in your mind; and, though he was perfectly bred, he was only about half as pleasant to have around as a well-behaved hyena.

I never could see what Miss Spencer saw in him, unless it was the locomotives. As far as we could tell—we never got much chance to judge—she was a real nice girl. She was a little haughty and never had much to say, and always acted as if she was a princess temporarily off the job. But she was a good scout, and proved it at the class parties by making it as pleasant as she could for the nervous nobodies who took her; while the yellow streak in Frankling was so broad there wasn't enough white in him to look like a collar. That's why the whole college went crazy with delight over the Ole Skjarsen affair.—Last station, ladies and gents. Story begins here.

When we were Seniors Ole Skjarsen was the chief embarrassment of the class. As a football player he was a wonder, but as a society fritterling he was one long catastrophe. He just couldn't possibly get hep—that was all. He was as companionable and as good-natured as a St. Bernard pup and just as inconvenient to have around. He dressed like a vaudeville sketch, and the number of things he could do in an hour, which are not generally done in low-vest and low-neck circles, was appalling. However we all loved Ole because of his grand and historic deeds on the team, and we took him to our parties and never so much as fell out of our chairs when he took off his coat in order to dance with more comfort and energy. The girls were as loyal as we were and danced with him as long as their feet held out, and we made them leather hero medals and really had a lot of fun out of the whole business—all except Frankling. It just about killed him to have to mingle with Ole socially; and when the time for the Senior class party drew near he got so nervous that he called a meeting of a few of us fellows and made a big kick.

"I tell you, fellows, this has got to stop!" he declared. "We've encouraged this lumber-jack until he has gotten too fresh for any use. Why, he'll ask any girl in the college to dance with him, and he goes and calls on them, too. Now, it's up to us to show him his place. I'm dead against putting his name in the hat for the party. He'll be sure to draw a girl who will be humiliated by having to go with him; and I have a little too much regard for chivalry and courtesy to allow him to do it. We'll just have to hint to him that he'd better have another engagement the night of the class party, that's all."

Thereupon we all rose joyously up and told Frankling to go jump in the creek. And he called us muckers and declared we were ignorant of the first principles of social ethics. He said that Skjarsen might be near enough our level to be inoffensive, but as for him he declined to have anything to do with the class party. Thereupon we gave three cheers, and that made him so mad that he left the meeting and fell over three chairs trying to do it with speed and dignity. Altogether it was a most enjoyable occasion. We'd never gotten quite so much satisfaction out of him before.

The drawing took place the next week and, sure enough, Frankling declined to allow his name to be put in the hat. We put Ole's name in and were prepared to have him draw a Class A girl; but what happened knocked the props out from under us. His name came fourth and he drew the mortgaged and unapproachable Miss Spencer.

We didn't know whether to celebrate or prepare for trouble. It seemed reasonable that Miss Spencer would back up Frankling and reduce Ole to an icicle when he asked her to go with him. But the next morning, when we saw Frankling, we were so happy that we forgot to worry. He was one large paroxysm. I never saw so much righteous indignation done up in one bundle. He cornered the class officers and declared in passionate tones that they had committed the outrage of the century. They had insulted one of the finest young women in the college. They had made it advisable for all persons of culture to remain away from Siwash. The disgrace must not be allowed. He didn't speak as a friend, but as a disinterested party who wanted justice done; and he proposed to secure it.