But he never reached the bench that day. On the way around the field he caught once a fleeting vision of Brother Don's red, grinning countenance beaming commendation, and once a glimpse of the smiling faces of his father and mother. He strove to wave a hand toward the latter, but as it almost cost him his position on the shoulders of the shrieking fellows beneath, he gave it up. Social amenities might wait; at present he was tasting the joys of a victorious Caesar.
THE DUB
"BRIGGS, Bayard Newlyn, Hammondsport, Ill., I L, H 24."
That's the way the catalogue put it. Mostly, though, he was called "Bi" Briggs. He was six feet and one inch tall and weighed one hundred and ninety-four pounds, and was built by an all-wise Providence to play guard. Graduate coaches used to get together on the side line and figure out what we'd do to Yale if we had eleven men like Bi.
Then after they'd watched Bi play a while they'd want to kick him.
He got started all wrong, Bi did. He came to college from a Western university and entered the junior class. That was his first mistake. A fellow can't butt in at the beginning of the third year and expect to trot even with fellows who have been there two years. It takes a chap one year to get shaken down and another year to get set up. By the time Bi was writing his "life" he had just about learned the rules.
His second mistake was in joining the first society that saw his name in the catalogue. It was a poor frat, and it queered Bi right away. I guess he made other mistakes, too, but those were enough.
In his junior year Bi was let alone. He was taking about every course any of us had ever heard of—and several we hadn't—and had no time for football. We got licked for keeps that fall, and after the Crimson and the Bulletin and the Graduates' Magazine and the newspapers had shown us just what ailed our system of coaching, we started to reorganize things. We hadn't reorganized for two years, and it was about time. The new coach was a chap who hadn't made the Varsity when he was in college, but who was supposed to have football down to a fine point; to hear the fellows tell about the new coach made you feel real sorry for Walter Camp. Well, he started in by kidnaping every man in college who weighed over a hundred and sixty-five. Bi didn't escape. Bi had played one year in the freshwater college at left tackle and knew a touchdown from a nose-guard, and that was about all. Bi was for refusing to have anything to do with football at first; said he was head-over-ears in study and hadn't the time. But they told him all about his Duty to his College and Every Man into the Breach, and he relented. Bi was terribly good-natured. That was the main trouble with him.
The fellows who did football for the papers fell in love with him on the spot. He was a good-looker, with sort of curly brown hair, nice eyes, a romantic nose, and cheeks like a pair of twenty-four-dollar American Beauties, and his pictures looked fine and dandy in the papers. "Bayard Briggs, Harvard's new candidate for guard, of whom the coaches expect great things." That's the way they put it. And they weren't far wrong. The coaches did expect great things from Bi; so did the rest of us. When they took Bi from the second and put him in at right guard on the Varsity we all approved.
But there was trouble right away. Bi didn't seem to fit. They swapped him over to left guard, then they tried him at right tackle, then at right guard again. Then they placed him gently but firmly back on the second. And Bi was quite happy and contented and disinterested during it all. He didn't mind when six coaches gathered about him and demanded to know what was the matter with him. He just shook his head and assured them good-naturedly that he didn't know; and intimated by his manner that he didn't care. When he came back to the second he seemed rather glad; I think he felt as though he had got back home after a hard trip. He stayed right with us all the rest of the season.