Frank Armstrong, Drop Kicker

by Matthew M. Colton

"Will it come, do you think?" inquired Frank.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see the sentiment of the class blaze out into action at any moment. Only to-night Pickering suggested a class meeting for a conference on a new society. He has been talking it over with a lot of his friends, and he feels pretty sure we could put something through if we all got behind it. The only trouble is that there are so many toadies to the old Society of the Gamma who say one thing and do another. Most of them grab for a chance to get into Gamma like a drowning man grabs at a straw."

"I'm for a new society," said Frank, "which will have its elections on merit, and which will make no distinctions between athletes, good students, or good fellows who are neither athletes or brilliant at their studies."

"Oh, ho, I think I have heard you say that the Gamma could be reformed!" said the Codfish derisively.

"That was before I knew much about it. They are so hardened and set in their own notions that the only way to reform them is with a good big club."

A few days later the subject of a new society came up again, and on the night of a certain day in May about a dozen of the prominent boys in the class met in Frank's room to talk it over together. Before the boys separated, it had been agreed to call a meeting of the class in the big room of the Library, where the whole matter was to come up. There was to be a general debate on the subject, and Armstrong, as befitted his position as an athlete in the class, was to make the principal speech. In the room were, of course, several friends of Gamma Tau, and it was not long before the information had penetrated to Dixon and other leaders of the old Society.

"Going to form a new society, are they? Well, we'll see about that! The School isn't big enough for what it has now in the way of societies. We'll pack that meeting full of our own men of the class and block everything they try. We'll see what they can do to old Gamma!"

Meanwhile, the Queen's baseball team continued to lose steadily. With Frank out of the game, there was no pitcher who could do even passable work. Dixon, in desperation, gave up his position behind the bat to the substitute catcher, a fellow named Watson, and went into the box himself. But he only lasted for one game, the game with Porter School, in which the latter fairly buried Queen's under the score of 14 to 3! It was then that resentment began to show itself in even the mildest of the students. The feeling was particularly strong in the second class, of which our friends were members. David Powers wrote an article on the situation for the Mirror, but the article never appeared in that paper, for the Chief Editor of the paper, under whose eye the article fell, was a Gamma boy, and he thought it too outspoken. David Powers promptly resigned from the paper, and the reason of his resignation soon became known to the class and the school at large. The incident strengthened the determination of every one to have a fight with Gamma to the death, and particularly roused our friends in Honeywell.

Affairs came rapidly to a climax. David and the Codfish put their heads together and prepared a poster calling on the class to meet in the Library room set aside for meetings of the class by the School authorities. The School woke up one morning in the latter part of May to find the posters boldly displayed on tree trunks and on various conspicuous points about the School. The announcement of the meeting was ripped down by the Gamma boys, who well knew what was going on, but the poster had had its effect and every one was on tip-toe.