T. Haviland Hicks, Senior

by James Raymond Elderdice

Latham simply would not be beat! The sporting pages had said: "Latham
simply can't beat Bannister!" Here the team, that could not be beaten was
being defeated, and the team that would not be defeated was, so far, the
victor. Perhaps the threatened dropping of Thor from the Gold and Green
squad shook somewhat Captain Butch's players; more likely, the Latham
aggregation got the jump on Bannister, opening up a bewildering attack of
criss-crosses, line plunges, cross-bucks, and tandems, from all of which
the forward pass frequently developed; they literally overwhelmed a
supposedly unbeatable team. And once they got the edge, it was hard for
Bannister to regain poise and to smother the fast plays that swept through
or around the bewildered eleven.

"We have got to beat 'em!" growled Shad, "Mike Murphy or not. Why,
if little old Latham cleans us up, smash go our chances of the State
Championship! Oh, look at Thor—the big mountain of muscle. Why doesn't he
wake up, and go push that team off the field?"

Thor, the Prodigious Prodigy, his vast hulk unprotected from the cold wind
by a football blanket, squatted on the ground, on the side-line, apparently
in a trance. Ever since the night before, when his father's letter had
dealt such a knock-out blow to his hopes of fulfilling the promise to his
dying mother, had rudely side-tracked him from the climb to his goal, the
blond giant had maintained that dumb apathy. If anything, it seemed that
the cruel blow of fate had only served to make Thor more stolid and
impassive than ever, and Theophilus wondered if the Colossus had really
grasped the import of the tragic letter as yet. The news had spread over
the college and campus, and the students were sincerely sorry for Thor. But
to offer him sympathy was about as difficult as consoling a Polar bear with
the toothache.

Coach Corridan, carrying out his plot, had decided not to start Thor in
the first half of the game. So the Norwegian Hercules, having received no
orders to the contrary, however, donned togs and appeared on the side-line,
where he had sat, paying not the slightest heed to the scrimmage and
seemingly unaware that the Gold and Green was facing defeat and the loss of
the Championship, for a game lost would put the team out of the running.
All big John Thorwald knew was, in a few weeks he must leave old Bannister,
must give up, for a time, his college course. Just when the grim battle was
won, he must leave, to work. Not that the Viking cared about toil. It was
the delay that chafed even his stolid self. He was stunned at having to
wait, maybe two years, before starting again.

And yet, as he squatted on the side-line, oblivious to everything but his
bitter reflections, the Theophilus-quoted words of Shakespeare persisted in
intruding on his thoughts:

"This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong—
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long."

Try as he would, he could not fight away the keen realization that
books and study were not all he would regret to leave. He was forced to
acknowledge that his mind kept wandering to other things. He found himself
pondering on the parting with Theophilus Opperdyke, with that crazy Hicks;
he wondered if he, out in the world again, toiling his lonely way, would
miss the glad fellowship of these care-free youths that he had watched,
but never shared, if he would ever think of the weeks at old Bannister.
Somehow, he felt that he would often vision the Quad at night, brightly
lighted, dormitories' lights agleam, students crossing and recrossing,
shouting at studious comrades. He would hear again the melodious
banjo-twanging, the gleeful saengerfests, the happy skylarking of the boys.
He had never entered into all this, and yet he knew he would miss it all;
why, he would even miss the daily scrimmage on Bannister Field; the noisy
shower-room, with its clouds of steam, and white forms flitting ghostlike.
He would miss the classrooms; in brief, everything!

John Thorwald was awakening! Even had this blow not befallen him, the huge,
slow-minded Norwegian, in time, with Theophilus Opperdyke's missionary
work, would have gradually come to understand things better—at least, to
know he was wrong in his ideas, which is the beginning of wisdom. Already,
he had ceased to condemn all this as foolishness, to rail at the youths
for wasting time and money. Already something stirred within him, and yet,
stolid as he was, bashful among the collegians, he was apparently the same.
But the sudden shock Head Coach Corridan spoke of had come. His father's
letter telling of his loss and that Thor must leave Bannister had awakened
him to the startling knowledge that he did care for something more than
study, that all the things that had puzzled him, that he had sneered at,
meant something to his existence, that he dreaded leaving other things than
his books.

"I—I don't understand things," thought Thorwald. "But—if I could only
stay, I'd want to learn. I'd try to get this 'college' spirit! Oh, I've
been all wrong, but if I could only stay—"

As if in answer to his unspoken thought, the big Freshman beheld marching
toward him Theophilus Opperdyke, his spectacles off, and his face aglow,
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., evidently in the throes of emotional insanity; a
Senior whom he knew as Parson Palmetter; Registrar Worthington, and Doctor
Alford, the kindly, beloved Prexy of old Bannister. The last named placed
his hand on the puzzled behemoth's ponderous shoulder.