"I understand, Thomas!" he said, and his words were reward enough for the
youth. "It was a big sacrifice, but you made it gladly—I know! You
gave up personal glory for the greater goal, and—old Bannister won the
Championship! You helped win, for the winning play turned on you. It was
splendid, my son, and I am proud of you! No matter if your sacrifice is
never known to the fellows, I understand."
A moment of silence on Hicks' part; then the sunny youth grinned at his
beloved Dad, as he responded blithesomely: "I'm Pollyanna, that old
Bannister and I won out, Dad!"
HICKS HAS A "HUNCH"
"Ladies and gentlemen, Seniors, Juniors, Sophomores, human beings,
and—Freshmen! Mr. Thomas Haviland Hicks, Jr., the Olympic High-Jump
Champion, holder of the World's record, and winner at the Panama-Pacific
International Exposition National Championships, in his event, is about to
high jump! The bar is at five feet, ten inches. Mr. Hicks is the Herculean
athlete in the crazy-looking bathrobe."
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., his splinter-structure enshrouded in that
flamboyant bathrobe of vast proportions and insane colors, that inevitably
attended his athletic efforts, shaming Joseph's coat-of-many-colors, gazed
despairingly at his good friend, Butch Brewster, and Track-Coach Brannigan,
with a Cheshire cat grin on his cherubic countenance.
"It's no use, Butch, it's no use!" quoth he, with ludicrous indignation,
as big Tug Cardiff, the behemoth shot-putter, through a huge megaphone
imitated a Ballyhoo Bill, and roared his absurd announcement to the
hilarious crowd of collegians in the stand. "Old Bannister will never
take my athletic endeavors seriously. Here I have won two second places,
and a third, in the high-jump this season, and have a splendid show to
annex first place and my track B in the Intercollegiates, but—hear
them!"
It was a balmy, sunshiny afternoon in late May. The sunny-souled,
happy-go-lucky T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had trained indefatigably for
the high jump, with the result that he had won several points for his
team—however, he had not realized his great ambition of first place, and
his track letter.
As Hicks now exclaimed to his team-mate and Coach Brannigan, no matter,
to the howling Bannister youths, if he had won three places in the high
jump, in regularly scheduled meets; his comrades had been jeering at
his athletic fiascos for nearly four years, and even had Hicks suddenly
blossomed out as a star athlete, they would not have abandoned their joyous
habit. Still, those football 'Varsity players to whom good Butch had read
Hicks, Sr.'s, letters, and explained the sunny youth's persistence, despite
his ridiculous failures, though they kept on hailing his appearance on
Bannister Field with exaggerated joy, understood the care-free collegian,
and loved him for his ambition to please his Dad. Since Hicks had
absolutely refused to accept his B, for any sport, unless he won it
according to Athletic Association eligibility rules, the eleven had kept
secret the contents of the letters Butch Brewster had read to them, for
Hicks requested it.
The Bannister College track squad, under Track Coach Brannigan and Captain
Spike Robertson, had been training most strenuously for that annual
cinder-path classic, the State Intercollegiate Track and Field
Championships. The sprinters had been tearing down the two-twenty
straightaway like suburban commuters catching the 7.20 A.M. for the city.
Hammer-throwers and shot-putters—the weight men—heaved the sixteen-pound
shot, or hurled the hammer, with reckless abandon, like the Strong Man of
the circus. Pole-vaulters seemed ambitious to break the altitude records,
and In so doing, threatened to break their necks; hurdlers skimmed over
the standard as lightly as swallows, though no one ever beheld swallows
hurdling. The distance runners plodded determinedly around the quarter-mile
track, broad-jumpers tried to jump the length of the landing-pit. And T.
Haviland Hicks, Jr., vainly essayed to clear five-ten In the high-jump!