"Well, you learned enough to suit you, didn't you?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," she said with a giggle. "Wasn't it fun, though! My father will be so pleased. He's the chairman of the congressional committee out at home and he's always told me an awful lot about politics. I've enjoyed this year so much."
"Well, I haven't," I said; "but I hope to enjoy next year." And then I took half an hour to tell her that, in spite of the fact that she was the most arrant, deceitful, unreliable, two-faced and scuttling politician in the world, she was almost incredibly nice. She listened quite patiently, and at the end she held up her fingers. They'd been crossed all the time.
No, that's the last I ever saw of her, Miss Allstairs. She left before Commencement. She sent me an invitation to the wedding. I'll bet she didn't quite get the significance of the magnificent silver set we Siwash boys sent. We sent it to the groom.
That was the end of women dominion at Siwash. There wasn't a rag of the movement left next fall. But we boys never entirely forgot what happened to us, and it's still the custom to elect a co-ed to some Athletic office. They do say that the only way to teach a politician what the people want is to bore a shaft in his head and shout it in, but our experience ought to be proof to the contrary. Why, all we needed was the gentle little hint that Mary Jane Hicks gave us.
CHAPTER XI
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA ALL-AMERICA
How did the Siwash game come out Saturday? Forget it, my boy. You'll never know in this oversized, ingrowing, fenced-off, insulated metropolis till some one writes and tells you. Every fall I ask myself that same question all day Saturday and Sunday, and do you suppose I ever find a Siwash score in one of those muddy-faced, red-headed, ward-gossip parties that they call newspapers in New York? Never, not at all, you hopeful tenderfoot from the unimportant West. After you've existed in this secluded portion of the universe a few years you'll get over trying to find anything that looks like news from home in the daily disturbances here. And I don't care whether your home is in Buffalo, Chicago or Strawberry Point, Iowa, either. Go down on the East Side and beat up a policeman, and you'll get immortalized in ten-inch type. Go back West and get elected governor, and ten to one if you're mentioned at all they'll slip you the wrong state to preside over.