T. Haviland Hicks, Senior

by James Raymond Elderdice

DEAR OLD JACK:

There is so much to tell you, old pal, that I scarcely know where to
start, but you want to know about the football eleven, so I'll write about
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., and his 'Billion-Dollar Mystery,' as he calls it;
about Thor, the Prodigious Prodigy. You well know what a scatter-brained
wretch Hicks is, and how he dearly loves to plot dramatic climaxes—to
mystify old Bannister. Just now Hicks has the campus as wrathful as it is
possible to be with that lovable youth; he has originated a great mystery,
and achieved a seemingly impossible feat, and instead of explaining it, he
swaggers around like a Hindoo mystic enshrouded in mystery and the fellows
are wild enough to tar and feather the incorrigible villain!

To get off to a sprint-start, up in Camp Bannister, before college opened,
when the squad was in training camp, Butch Brewster says that Coach
Corridan one day, before Hicks, expressed a fervid ambition to find a huge,
irresistible fullback—

Here the chronicle must hang fire, while T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., grinning
at the wrath his mysterious behavior aroused, peruses those sections of
Scoop Sawyer's epistle telling of two scenes already described; first,
the one in the Camp Bannister grub-shack, where Head Coach Corridan
blue-printed the Gargantuan athlete he desired, and the blithesome Hicks
confidently requested that the Herculean task be left to him; second, the
scene of intense excitement on the campus the night that the missing Hicks
returned personally conducting that mountain of muscle, the blond-haired
Thor.

Having grinned at these descriptions, the pestiferous Hicks scanned a
picturesque description by Scoop of the events that transpired between that
memorable night and the present invasion of the sunny Senior's room by the
indignant squad.

—Naturally, Jack, old Bannister was intensely curious to know who this
"Thor" could be, and how Hicks unearthed such a giant. But, instead of
swaggering a trifle, as he inevitably does, and saying, 'Oh, I told you
just to leave it to Hicks!' then telling all about it, after accomplishing
what everyone believed a ridiculously impossible quest, he maintains that
provokingly mysterious silence, and John Thorwald (we know his name,
anyway) stolidly refers us to Hicks. So where Thor originated or how under
the sun Hicks got on his trail, after making his rash vow to corral a
mighty fullback, is a deep, dark mystery.

Now for Thor himself. Words cannot describe that Prodigious Prodigy; he
must be seen to be believed! We do know that he is John Thorwald, and of
distinctly Norwegian descent, so that calling him after the mythic Norse
god is extremely appropriate. And he is reminiscent of the great Thor, with
his vast strength and prowess. Thanks to T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s, love of
mystery, and of tantalizing old Bannister, we know nothing of Thorwald's
past, but we are sure he has lived and toiled among men, to possess
that powerful build. I can't describe him, old man, without resorting to
exaggeration, for ordinary words and phrases are utterly inadequate with
Thor! Conjure up a vision of Gulliver among the Lilliputians and you can
picture him towering over us. He is a Viking of old, with his fair features
and blond hair. Probably twenty-five years old, he has a powerful frame and
prodigious strength, he dwarfs such behemoths as Butch and Beef, and makes
such insignificant mortals as little Theophilus and myself seem like
insects!

Thor is so big, Jack, that when he gets in a room, he crowds everyone
into the corridor, and fills it alone. No wonder Hicks telegraphed to knock
out the partitions between five rooms to make space for Thor! When he
stands on the campus he blots out several sections of scenery, and the
college disappears, giving the impression he has swallowed it. Thor is a
slow-minded being, but possessed of a grim determination. To get an idea
into his mind requires a blackboard and Chautauqua lecturer, but once he
masters it, he never lets go; so it will be with football signals, once let
him grasp a play, he will never be confused. He is simply a huge, stolid
giant. He has a bulldog purpose to get an education, and nothing else
matters. As for college spirit, the glad comradeship of the campus, he has
no time for it; he pays no attention to the fellows at all, only to Hicks.

His devotion to that wretch is pathetic! He follows Hicks around like a
huge mastiff after a terrier, or an ocean leviathan towed by a tug-boat; he
seems absolutely helpless without T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., and so we have
a daily Hicks' personally conducted tour of Thor to interest us. Briefly,
Jack, John Thorwald is a slow-moving, slow-minded, grimly bulldog giant,
who has come to Bannister to study, and as for any other phase of campus
existence, he has never awakened to it!

Now for the football story: Well, the day after Hicks' sensational arrival,
which I described, Coach Corridan, Captain Butch Brewster, Beef, Buster,
Pudge, Monty, and Roddy with yours truly, went to Thor's room in Creighton
just before football practice. We found that Colossus, who had matriculated
as a Freshman, aided by Hicks, patiently masticating mental food as served
by Ovid. Coach Corridan said, 'Come on, Thorwald, over to the Gym.; we'll
fix you out with togs, if we can get two suits big enough to make one for
your bulk! Ever play the game?' 'I play some,' rumbled Thor stolidly, never
raising his eyes from his Latin. 'Don't bother me, I want to study.
I have not time for such foolishness. I am here to study, to get an
education!' 'But,' urged the coach earnestly, 'you must play football for
your Alma Mater, for old Bannister. Why, you—you must, that's all!' Thor
gazed at Hicks questioningly—I forgot to add that insect's name—and
asked, 'Is it so, Hicks? I got to play for the college?' And when Hicks
grinned, 'Sure, Thor, it must be did. Bannister expects you to smear the
other teams over the landscape,' that blond Norwegian Viking said, 'Well,
then, I play.'