THEN THE WHOLE HAT SEEMED TO LET GO LIKE A BROKEN RESERVOIR.
Now, whether Tom made some mistake in getting those tins canted into the hat properly or not will never be known. Perhaps he pulled the hat down too hard over Jonas's brows when he put it on him, and so loosened something. At any rate, Jonas had not taken two steps before a streak of batter was seen running down over his face. Then the whole hat seemed to let go like a broken reservoir, and the milk and molasses and egg and flour streamed down in a shower over the miserable Jonas.
He tried to pull the hat off, and did so, leaving on his head, however, the tins, which gave him the most astonishing appearance possible. Tom fell back on the table in an agony of laughter, and in doing so sat down on the dish that had contained the batter. The audience simply cried itself hoarse with laughter. Sally Conners screamed with all her might, and all the farmers' boys, who were present for miles around, haw-hawed, and the old folks almost died looking at poor Jonas. In the midst of it all, I, Peter Samuels, stage director, drew the curtain, and with the other two performers stole down the back stairs, and made a run for home, and so the great sleight-of-hand performance came to an end.
The Colby people never forgot that performance. We never did, either. Uncle Job kept Tom's watch until he left for college, and then gave it back to him, and Tom bought him a new silver time-piece. The widow Colby and her grandchildren realized a good sum from the entertainment, and the next vacation we three boys spent in the city. I am afraid Jonas has lost the favor of Sally Conners, for she never can speak of him without laughing. But then Sally always did laugh on almost any provocation.
So far as is known, no schedule of interscholastic track and field records has ever before been printed, and although the table published in this issue is as accurate as can be made under the circumstances, still there are doubtless a few errors scattered around in it somewhere that will be discovered by sharp-eyed readers in the very near future. If the latter will inform this Department of the mistakes as soon as they are found out, the table may be depended upon to be absolutely exact the next time it is printed—and it certainly will be offered in better form. To-day I have been obliged to put two bicycle events and two hammer and shot events on the list, because the interscholastic associations in the various parts of the country are about evenly divided in the choice of distances and the use of weights. I have left out entirely such acrobatic events as the hop, step, and jump, and throwing the baseball, because they are not athletic, and do not deserve to be recognized on any interscholastic programme. Perhaps a year from now the school associations will have come to the conclusion that, take it all in all, it is really better to have a uniform measure of efficiency in sport as well as in anything else, and then a comparative table will be of more value.
INTERSCHOLASTIC RECORDS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1895.
| Event. | Maker. | School. | Time and place. | ||||
| 100-yard dash | 10-1/5 | sec. | F. H. Bigelow. | Worcester H.-S. | N.E.I.S.A.A. games, 1894. | ||
| 220-yard run | 22-2/5 | " | F. H. Bigelow. | Worcester H.-S. | N.E.I.S.A.A. games, 1894. | ||
| 440-yard run | 50-3/5 | " | T. E. Burke. | Boston English H.-S. | N.E.I S.A.A. games, 1894. | ||
| Half-mile inn | 2 | m. | 4-1/5 | " | J. A. Meehan. | Condon, N.Y. | N.Y.I.S.A.A. games, May 11, 1895. |
| Mile run | 4 | " | 34-2/5 | " | W. T. Laing. | Phillips Academy, Andover. | N.E.I.S.A.A. games, 1894 |
| Mile walk | 7 | " | 17-3/5 | " | A. N. Butler. | Hillhouse H.-S., New Haven. | Conn. H.-S.A.A. games, June 8, 1895 |
| 120-yard hurdle | 15-3/5 | " | A. F. Beers. | De La Salle, N.Y. | N.Y.I.S.A.A. games, May 11, 1895. | ||
| 220-yard hurdle | 26-1/2 | " | Field. | Hartford H.-S. | Conn. H.-S.A.A. games, June 8, 1895. | ||
| Mile bicycle | 2 | " | 34-1/5 | " | I. A. Powell. | Cutler, N.Y. | N.Y.I.S.A.A. games, May 11, 1895. |
| Two-mile bicycle | 5 | " | 18-2/5 | " | Baker. | Hotchkiss, Lakeville, Conn. | Conn. H.-S.A.A. games, June 8, 1895. |
| Running high jump | 5 | ft. | 11 | in. | S. A. W. Baltazzi. | Harvard, N.Y. | N.Y.I.S.A.A. games, May 11, 1895. |
| Running broad jump | 21 | " | 6 | " | C. Brewer. | Hopkinson, Boston. | N.E.I.S.A.A. games, 1890. |
| Pole vault | 10 | " | 7 | " | B. Johnson. | Worcester Academy. | N.E.I.S.A.A. games, June 15, 1895. |
| Throwing 12-lb. hammer | 125 | " | R. F. Johnson. | Brookline H.-S. | N.E.I.S.A.A. games, 1894. | ||
| Throwing 16-lb. hammer | 111 | " | 10 | " | F. G. Beck. | Hillhouse H.-S. | Conn. H.-S.A.A. games, June 8, 1895. |
| Putting 12-lb. shot | 40 | " | 3/4 | " | A. C. Ayres. | Condon, N.Y. | N.Y.I.S.A.A. games, May 11, 1895. |
| Putting 16-lb. shot | 39 | " | 3 | " | M. O'Brien. | Boston English H.-S. | N.E.I.S.A.A. games, 1894. |