Left End Edwards

by Ralph Henry Barbour

The school returned to Brimfield disgruntled, disappointed and critical. There was scarcely a fellow on the train who didn't have a perfectly good theory as to the trouble with the eleven and who wasn't willing and eager to explain it. As for the game with Claflin, now just a fortnight distant, why, it was already as good as lost! Anyone would have told you that. The only point of disagreement was the size of the score. That ran, according to various estimates, from 6 to 0 to 50 to 3. It was a wonder they allowed Brimfield that 3! But all this was on the way home. Gradually the reaction set in and hope crept back. After all, a slump was something you had to contend with. It happened to every team some time in the season. Perhaps it was lucky it had come now instead of later. Of course, Chambers Tech was only a fair-to-middling team and Brimfield ought to have beaten her hands down, but since she hadn't, there was no use in worrying about it. By the time supper was over that evening, the stock of the Brimfield Football Team had risen to close to par, and anyone who had had the temerity to even suggest the possibility of a victory for Claflin would have been promptly and efficaciously squelched!

The Chambers game resulted in a shake-up. That it was coming was hinted on Monday when only a few of the substitutes on the first were given any work and four of the second team fellows were lifted from their places and shifted over to what represented the 'varsity that day. These four were Trow and Saunders, tackles; Thursby, centre, and Freer, half-back. On Tuesday the first-string 'varsity men were back at work, with the exception of Benson, whose ankle was in pretty bad condition. Thursby was given a try-out at centre and Saunders at left tackle in the short scrimmage that followed practice. Thursby showed up so brilliantly that many predicted the retirement of Innes to the bench. Saunders failed to impress Coach Robey very greatly and he and Freer and Trow went back to the second the next day. The slump was still in evidence and the work was light until Thursday. Benson was still on crutches and his place was being taken by Roberts. Thursby ran Innes such a good race for the position of centre-rush that a substitute centre named Coolidge suddenly found his nose out of joint and faced the prospect of viewing the Claflin game from the bench.

The school held its first mass meeting on Wednesday evening of that week and cheered and sang and whooped things up with a fine frenzy. The discouragement of the Chambers game was quite forgotten. Andy Miller, in a short speech, soberly predicted a victory over Claflin, and the audience yelled until the roof seemed to shake. Coach Robey gave a résumé of the season, thanked the school for its support of the team, pledged the best efforts of everyone concerned and, while refusing to say so in so many words, hinted that Brimfield would have the long end of the score on the twenty-fifth. After that the football excitement grew and spread and took possession of the school like an epidemic. Recitations became farces, faculty fumed and threatened—and bore it, and some one hundred and fifty boys fixed their gaze on the twenty-fifth of November and lived breathlessly in the future.

There was a second mass meeting on Saturday, a meeting that ended in a parade up and down the Row, much noise and a vast enthusiasm. Brimfield had met Southby Academy in the afternoon and had torn the visitors to tatters, scoring almost at will and sending the hopes of her adherents soaring into the zenith. To be sure, Southby had presented a rather weak team, but, as an offset to that, Brimfield had played without the services of the regular right end, without her captain and with a back-field largely substitute during most of the game. There was nothing wrong with Andy Miller, but it was thought best to save him for the final conflict. The last fortnight of a football season is a hard period for the captain, no matter how smoothly things have progressed; and Brimfield had had a particularly fortunate six weeks. Andy Miller was not the extremely nervous type, but, nevertheless, he had lost some fourteen pounds during the month and was far "finer" than Danny Moore wanted to see him. So Andy, dressed in "store clothes," saw the Southby game from the side-line, hobnobbing with the coaches and Joe Benson, still on crutches, and with Norton, who, after smashing out two touchdowns in the first period, was also taken out to be saved.

There was no trace of the slump left, and the final score that Saturday afternoon was 39 to 7, and the school was hysterically delighted, which accounts for the added enthusiasm which kept them marching up and down the Row in the evening until the patience of a lenient faculty was exhausted, and Mr. Conklin, prodded into action by a telephone message from the Cottage, appeared and dispersed the assembly.

The second team was to go out of business on Thursday, and several members of it were eager to end the season with a banquet. Freer and Saunders dropped in on Steve and Tom Sunday afternoon to talk it over and win their support. It was a nasty day, rainy and blowy and cold, and most of the fellows were huddling indoors around the radiators. Steve and Tom, on opposite sides of the table, were chewing the ends of their pens and trying to write their Sunday letters when the visitors came. Steve was studiedly haughty, as, to his mind, became one who was unjustly suspected of dishonesty. The visitors seemed puzzled by his manner and presently addressed themselves almost entirely to Tom, who, anxious to atone for his room-mate's churlishness, was nervously affable and unnaturally enthusiastic.

"We don't see," explained Saunders, "why we shouldn't be allowed to have a banquet after we quit training. We deserve it. We've done as much, in a way, as the 'varsity fellows to win from Claflin. We've been the goats all the season and it seems to me we ought to get something out of it. What we want to do is to go to Josh and get him to give us permission to have a blow-out in the village Thursday night."

"Or here," supplemented Freer, "if he won't let us go to the village. What do you fellows think?"

"I think it's a good scheme," answered Tom. "And we might get one over on the 'varsity, too. I mean we'd have our banquet and lots of fun whether we won from Claflin or not, while the 'varsity, if it loses the game, doesn't enjoy its banquet very much, I guess."

"Well, will you fellows come around to Brownell's room to-night after supper? Al is willing enough, but, being captain, he doesn't want to start the thing himself. We're going to see all the fellows this afternoon and then have a sort of a meeting this evening about eight. You'll come, Edwards?"