“Look here, Jimmy, who’s giving this dinner?” demanded Elliot. “Will you come, Mr. Lord? We will have those chops and things, and they’re great; but it’s none of his old business.”
“Yes, I’ll come,” said Trefethen. “I never was as hungry for a chop in my life.”
“Let’s invite Pearly Gates, so he can sing and tell about outdoor sports,” suggested Selden enthusiastically. “And you might ask Pat O’Connor—he does lovely stunts. And what about—”
“Jimmy,” shouted the entertainer, “will you let me run my own dinner?”
“Two captains in one canoe are overallowance!”
“Well, I don’t know,” growled Jimmy. “The last one wasn’t satisfactory. You’ve got the cash, but I’ve got the sense.”
And with that there was a spectacular, close race coming down the water—the rain was over—the canoe and rowboat flew out to posts of vantage, with parting arrangements for dinner-time called back and forth.
Mory’s is a low, wooden, two-story house on Temple Street. Trefethen, looking at it, as he and Elliot turned the corner that evening, suddenly remembered it well. It had looked just like that, small and dirty-white, twenty-five and thirty years ago. Up five or six steps and into a side door they went. In each of the three or four rooms—low rooms, with bare floors and a few cheap sporting prints about the walls—are perhaps three heavy oblong oak tables covered thick with initials cut deep into the top. They are initials of students of Yale who for twenty-odd years have been making monuments of Mory’s tables. Against the walls of some of the rooms hang other tables, initial-covered, and the legs taken off. Freshmen are not allowed in this holy place, but the three upper classes constantly give dinners here—little dinners of six or so, for the most part, and the boys sing college songs all through them. The especial feature of such a meal is a chop, enormous in size, and served on a plate twelve or fourteen inches across and supported by glorified potatoes. The chops and potatoes at Mory’s are famous.
Marcus Trefethen looked over the array of grouped letters, many of them standing for names now on the country’s roll of honor, carved when their owners were fresh-faced lads like these who stood about him, who leaned over him with a big young hand now and then familiarly, comrade-like, on his shoulder. Earnestly they studied out famous name after name to show him.