"Has anybody here seen our Hicks?
H-i-c-k-s!
Has anybody here seen our Hicks?
If you've seen him, answer, 'Yes!'
He's tall and slim, and he wears a grin,
And his banjo-thumping is a sin.
Has anybody here seen our Hicks—
Hicks—and his old banjo?"
Captain Butch Brewster, big Beef McNaughton, the Phillyloo Bird—that
flamingo-like Senior—and little Theophilus Opperdyke, the timorous boner
whom Bannister College called the "Human Encyclopedia," roosted on the
sacred Senior Fence, between the Gymnasium and the Administration Building.
A gloomy silence, like a somber mantle, enshrouded the four members of '19,
as they listened to a rollicking parody on, "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?"
chanted by some Juniors in Nordyke, with T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., as the
object of solicitude. Nor did the melancholy youths respond to the queries
hurled down at them from the dormitories' windows:
"Say, Butch Brewster, where is that crazy Hicks?"
"Beef, ain't our Hicks a-comin' back here no more?"
"Hello, Phillyloo, any word from our Hicks yet?"
"Ahoy there, Theophilus, where is Hicks, the Missing?"
The seven-thirty study-hour bell was ringing, its mellow chimes sounding
from the Administration Building tower. From the windows of the dormitories
gleams of light shot athwart the darkness. Over in Creighton Hall, the
abode of Freshmen, a silence reigned, but in Smithson, where the Sophomores
roomed, Nordyke, home of the Juniors, and Bannister, haunt of the solemn
Seniors, pandemonium obtained. In these dorm. rooms and corridors that
night, just as in the class-rooms, or on the campus, and Bannister Field
that day, there was but one topic. Whenever two students met, came the
query inevitable:
"Where is Hicks? Isn't Hicks coming back this year?"
The Freshmen, bewildered, quite naturally, at the furore made over
one missing student, asked, "Who is Hicks?" Seeking information from
upper-classmen they received innumerable tales, in the nature of Iliad
and Odyssey, concerning T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.; they heard of his campus
exploits, such as his originating The Big Brotherhood of Bannister, and
they laughed, at recitals of his athletic fiascos. They were told of his
inevitably sunny nature, his loyal comradeship, his generous disposition,
and as a result, the Freshmen, too, became intensely interested in the
all-important campus problem: "Where is T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.?"
Little Theophilus Opperdyke, whose big-rimmed spectacles, high forehead,
and bushy hair gave him an intensely owlish appearance, sighed
tremendously, stared solemnly at his class-mates, and became the author of
a most astounding statement: "I—I can't study," quavered the "boner,"
he whose tender devotion to his books was a campus tradition, and whose
loyalty to his firm friend, the blithesome Hicks, was as that of Damon
to Pythias, "I just can't care about my studies, without Hicks here!
Somehow, it—it doesn't seem like old times, on the campus."