For the Honor of the School: A Story of School Life and Interscholastic Sport

“Strike!” called the umpire.

Gray looked disconcerted for an instant. Then he tapped the plate resolutely and again faced the pitcher. The next ball was far out and the boy at bat made no offer at it.

“Two balls!”

Again the chap with the great green S decorating his jersey went through his contortions, and the sphere sped forward. Gray struck at it with all his force and spun around on his heel. The catcher dropped to his knee and picked the ball from the dust. It was a most deceptive drop and the waiting batsmen on the bench nodded their heads in approval.

“Two strikes!”

A little spot of deeper red shone on Gray’s cheek now and he moved his stick a bit nervously behind his shoulder. The pitcher stepped back into his box, nodded to a sign from the catcher, and let drive. Then there was a sharp report as Gray’s bat struck the speeding sphere, the grand stand was on its feet, the three men on bases raced home almost in a bunch, and Gray was rounding first base at a desperate pace!

High and far sped the ball. The left-fielder was racing back down the field. Would he catch it? Pandemonium reigned in the grand stand. Wayne and the others were on their feet, shouting wildly and waving their caps. Gray reached second base, cast a glance toward left field, and came on. The fielder turned almost under the ball and reached upward, leaped back a step, clutched wildly, and fell. The ball, tipping his fingers just beyond his reach, dropped to earth. And Gray, panting and happy, crossed the home plate into the arms of his exultant friends.

The score was now in Hillton’s favor by one run: thirteen to twelve. The half was soon over. The next man struck a short grounder and was out at first. And Shrewsburg went to bat, desperate resolve written large on every face.

“Say, that friend Gray of yours is a great little boy!” exclaimed Dave, as he pulled his cap on again and pounded his feet in time to the refrain of Hilltonians, which the audience had started to chant.

“That’s the finest home run that’s ever been seen on this field since I’ve been in school,” said Don. “And it was needed, too. A home run in time saves the nine.”

“I hope it’ll save this nine,” laughed Wayne. “But those chaps look as though they meant business. One run will tie us; two will beat us.”

But fortune proved a friend to Hillton, and Gray’s wonderful hit saved the day, for Forest worked like a veteran pitcher and struck out the first two Shrewsburg men in short order. The next batter wrote finis to the game by sending a high foul into the first baseman’s gloves, and the grand stand was emptied of its throng. Shrewsburg accepted defeat manfully, answered the Hillton cheer with one equally hearty, bundled itself into the waiting coach, and took its departure with much good-natured defiant flaunting of green banners. Gray, by one brilliant stroke, had achieved a much-coveted position on the nine and was a school hero for many weeks.

The following day Wayne again sped over the mile while Professor Beck held the watch on him. But something was wrong. The professor gave him the result with ill-concealed displeasure.

“Five minutes twenty-three seconds. That’ll never do. You must cut off fifteen seconds, Gordon, if you expect to make the team. What’s the trouble?”

But Wayne couldn’t tell. He had done his best, he thought, and asserted positively that he could run the distance again without feeling it, which feat was naturally not allowed.

“Take a rest to-morrow,” counseled the professor, “so that you’ll be in good condition for Saturday. For I’ll tell you frankly that if you don’t mend that time in the handicaps you’ll find yourself out of it.”

And Wayne jogged back to the gymnasium feeling very forlorn and discouraged. But after his bath and rubbing his spirits returned and he vowed to open the professor’s eyes next time. He had entered for both the half and the mile, the former on Professor Beck’s advice. “For,” said the latter, “the races are far apart, and you’ll get over the effects of the half before the mile is called. And the half may limber you up for the longer distance.”

Wayne spent the next day in rest. Don, too, was idle, as were most of the boys who were to participate in the handicaps, and he and Wayne took a short walk along the river in the afternoon and returned at dusk in time for an hour’s study before supper. The handicaps were announced that evening, and, as is usual in like cases, there was some dissatisfaction expressed by contestants. Wayne found that he was to be allowed twenty yards in the half mile and was to run from scratch in the mile, and was quite satisfied. One thing that told its own story was the announcement that Merton would receive an allowance of eight feet in the hammer throw.

“Poor old Dave!” said Don. “That’ll cut him up like anything. I suppose it means that Hardy has turned out to be a better man, for you see he’s down for scratch. Hello! they’ve given Middleton four seconds in the one-hundred-and-twenty-yard hurdles; well, he ought to come somewhere near winning with that allowance.”

Wayne went to bed that night filled with determination to win on the morrow. He was not the sort of lad that allows the thought of coming events to keep him awake, and he was soon fast asleep; nerves were practically unknown to Wayne. But his brain proved more troublesome and continued its labors after the body had gone to rest, with the result that his slumbers were disturbed by dreams in which he seemed to be trying to win the mile race with Professor Beck perched like an old man of the sea on his shoulders, and Don continually thrusting hurdles in his path.

CHAPTER XX

BADLY BEATEN

Saturday dawned fresh and clear. A little breeze, redolent of forest depths and growing things, blew over the meadows from Mount Adam. The river sparkled beneath its touch and the broad carpet of yellowish green marshland beyond felt its breath and stirred in response. The school turned out to a man – or should I say to a boy? – and long before the hour set for the meeting the stand and much of the turf without the ropes that guarded the track in the vicinity of the finish lines were well thronged. The village came too, in the persons of the postmaster and the livery-stable keeper and the two rival grocers and many others of local prominence; and their wives and daughters came with them and lent an added dash of color to the scene.

The meeting was much like every other event of the kind. Contestants ran, hurdled, or jumped; the judges looked inscrutable; and the audience cheered indiscriminately. It was little to them whether this boy was disappointed or that one made glad; they applauded a brilliant finish or an extra inch surmounted with the pole, and cared but little what the figures might be. There were no records broken that day, but Professor Beck and Don and the coaches – of which there was a small army on hand, many having arrived on the morning train – were on the whole well satisfied with the results shown. Don took both hurdle events, and Perkins came in a close second. Middleton failed to use his allowance to good effect, and made a poor third in each race. Dave threw the hammer one hundred and thirty-eight feet four inches, which, with his handicap of eight feet, gave him second place in the event. Hardy threw one hundred and forty-seven feet two inches, and Kendall was third with one hundred and forty feet nine inches. Hardy’s performance assured him a place on the team and indicated a possibility of victory at the forthcoming meeting. The pole vault, the sprints, the jumps, and the quarter mile were all well contested, and some of them showed even brilliant work. Whitehead ran away from the field in the last twenty yards of the half mile, and Wayne finished a poor sixth, partly owing to the fact that he had made a bad start and partly because the pace was too hot for him; Whitehead’s time was 2.07⅕.

After such a sorry showing as that it seemed that Fortune owed Wayne some reparation in the mile event; if so, Fortune didn’t pay the debt. Profiting by the experience gained in the half mile, Wayne got off well with the pistol and took a place in the van of the group of eight runners. At the quarter mile he was third and felt as fresh as a colt; at the half he had pulled himself up to a place on the inside of the track and but a yard behind the leader. At the three quarters he was still running strong, but Whitehead had passed him and was disputing the lead with Battles. At the beginning of the last lap, Wayne found himself fourth. On the back stretch he passed Seers and drew up behind Whitehead and Battles. His legs were strong, his breath good, and he could have run another mile without minding it. But after the turn, when he dashed ahead to win, he found to his dismay that there was no dash in him. Battles and Whitehead tore away from him and Seers crawled up, hung for an instant on his flank, and passed him. Battles won first by a fraction of a second, Whitehead was next, Seers third, and Wayne fourth. The winner’s time was 5.03⅘; Wayne’s, 5.19.

He crawled dejectedly to the dressing room and refused to be comforted by Whitehead’s predictions of better success next time. He was out of it, and he knew it. There was nothing to do save put as good a face as possible upon defeat. He trotted away to the gymnasium before the meeting was quite over and took his bath and rub down almost alone. To-day these things failed to summon back his spirits, and he went to his room, perched himself on his own particular window seat, gazed out across the sunlit river and marshes, and thought it all over.

It seemed hard luck. A few months before he would have cared but little whether he made the track team or not. But now it was different. The virus of athletic ambition was in his veins, and the afternoon’s defeat, entailing as it did loss of position on the track team, seemed magnified into an overwhelming catastrophe. He tried to summon back the old indifference; he remembered scoffing at Don because the latter made so much of athletic triumphs; somehow it was different to-day, and he wished that he had resisted Don’s appeals and stayed out of it all. Then a sense of injury overwhelmed him. What right had Don and Professor Beck to encourage him as they had into thinking that the long hard training would win him a place on the team and then to drop him like a – like a hot penny because he had failed once or twice to come up to their standard? He was so certain all the time that he could have won if – if – what? What had been the trouble? He knit his brows and stared hard across the river. He had had no trouble as to wind; his legs had remained strong and tireless to the end; he had simply been unable to run as fast at the finish as the others. Very well, then, it only remained to learn how to save his strength so that he could spurt hard in the last fifty yards. Why couldn’t they give him another chance? In the midst of his musings Don came in. He tossed a pair of grips on to the table and joined Wayne at the window. There was an atmosphere of constraint in the study, and for a moment neither boy spoke. Then Don broke the silence.

“I’m awfully sorry, Wayne.”

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

There was another interval of silence. Then Don broke out with:

“But it does matter! I feel all broke up over it! It’s too bad, old chap; that’s what it is. But perhaps it isn’t all up yet. I’m going to try and get Beck to give you another try, Wayne. Don’t you think you can do better?”

“Yes, I know I can. I could have won easily to-day if – if – The trouble was I didn’t have any speed left at the finish; even Seers passed me! Can’t I learn to save up for a spurt? I wasn’t tired; I could have run another mile, I’m sure, Don.”

“Of course you can learn, if – if there is only time. You see, old chap, there is only three weeks left. But I am going to see Beck, and I’ll do all I can. I feel certain that you can beat that time to-day, and better it, too. There has been a mistake somewhere; you haven’t been worked right. And it’s Beck’s fault, I guess; at any rate, it isn’t yours.”

“Oh, it’s nobody’s fault, I reckon; it’s just rotten luck!”

“No, luck doesn’t enter into it, Wayne. There’s been a mistake somewhere; and I hope Beck will see it.” He paused and looked in a troubled way at his chum. “Perhaps you think it is my fault, Wayne?” he said wistfully. Wayne shook his head.

“No. I was rather blaming you and Beck a while ago, but I had no right to. It isn’t your fault at all, Don, and don’t you worry about me; you’ve got enough to attend to. I’ll be all right. Only if you don’t mind speaking to Beck about it, you know – ”

“Of course I will. Right away, too. All the fellows are asked to report in Society House this evening at eight. Beck is going to announce the names of the fellows who are to go to training table Monday, and some of the grads are going to talk a bit. Remsen came to-day.”

“Who’s Remsen; the football man?”

“Yes, he used to coach the eleven. He’s a jolly nice fellow, and awfully popular here. He’ll probably talk some, too. I hope he does; he’s worth hearing. You’ll go, won’t you?”

“If I’m wanted; though, if I’m not going to be on the team, I don’t see what use – ”

“Of course you’re going on! So shut up and keep chipper. I promised Beck to go to his room at five, and it’s nearly that time. Don’t get blue, old chap; we’ll fix it all right!”

When the door had slammed to after Don the boy at the window sat a long while looking out on to the darkening landscape. The river grew to a deep violet with steel-gray ripples. The marsh became filled with shadows, and the sun dropped behind the purple hills and left the twilight cold and colorless. With a sigh and a shake of his broad shoulders Wayne jumped up, pulled down the shades, and lighted the gas. He seized the first book that came to hand, a Greek Testament, and settled himself resolutely in the armchair.

“If Beck won’t give me another show,” he muttered as he found his place, “I’ll go ahead and train on my own hook. And I’ll cut that old mile down to five minutes even if I have to work all day. And then they’ll have to take me on!”

CHAPTER XXI

REMSEN’S PLEDGE

The tiny hall in Society House was crowded when Wayne and Don entered at a little before eight. All the candidates for the track team, the crew, the football team, and the baseball nine were there, and a group of five graduates were talking together by the stage. At the latter Wayne looked with some curiosity. Gardiner topped them all by half a head. Kirk, the old baseball player, looked like a pygmy beside him. Don pointed out the others: Barret, the renowned hurdler; Burns, once a famous sprinter; and Kenyon, holder of the intercollegiate two-hundred-and-twenty-yard record. Paddy joined them and the three found seats near the front. Then Dave entered and squeezed into a three-inch space between Wayne and Paddy.

“How’d they go, Dave?” asked Don.

“Rotten; I can’t throw a hammer. I used to think I could, but – ” He shook his head sadly.

“Go on wid yer,” said Paddy. “Yez kin bate thim all if yez ’ud only think so. – But what in the name of goodness was the matter with you to-day?” he asked, turning to Wayne. Wayne smiled cheerfully and shook his head.

“Blest if I know, Paddy. I guess I’m like Dave; I used to think I could run, but – ” He shook his head in mimicry of Dave and wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.

“Well, you’re all a sorry lot,” said Paddy in disgust. “All except Don, and he can’t help winning, hang him!” Further compliments were interrupted by the appearance of Professor Beck and the former football coach, Stephen Remsen. Paddy jumped to his feet.

“Now then, fellows,” he cried, facing the hall, “three times three for Remsen!” The cheers were given with a will and the recipient bowed his thanks smilingly. Then Professor Beck took the platform, and, after a few words of criticism on the day’s events, read the training table list. Sixteen fellows were selected to go to “Mother” Burke’s in the village, and twelve were named for a table in the school dining room. Wayne’s name was on neither list and he shot an inquiring glance at Don. The latter whispered:

“It’s all right. You’ll go to table later.”

Two of the graduates, fine, healthy-looking men, took their turns after the professor and pointed out some defects in the afternoon’s performances, spoke encouragingly to the fellows, and were cheered as they took their seats. Then Remsen arose and the little audience became on the instant as quiet as though made up of so many wax figures. Remsen was more than a Hillton graduate, more than a successful coach; he was a sort of school deity whom successive classes had long worshiped. In his school days he had been stroke in a winning crew, had excelled with the weights, and had been captain of the football eleven when it had devastated the surrounding country of laurels. These things are enough to place a man’s name high on the roster of fame and to earn him gratitude. But besides this Remsen had been football coach for three years, during which time the team had won two victories from and played a tie with St. Eustace; and always, ever since his graduation, he had labored unceasingly for the school and had done more than any other individual toward establishing its athletics on a firm, stable, and honest basis.

In appearance he was about thirty years of age, and “football man” was stamped all over his well-built frame. He was the kind of man for whom one would have predicted success in whatever undertaking he had entered. His face was handsome and manly; his eyes gray and clear; and his smile worth seeing. Hillton was proud of him, from its principal to its smallest junior, and he was proud of Hillton. When the fellows had stopped clapping he began to speak.

“I’ve been asked by your principal to say a few words to you this evening. I make this statement before I begin, so that if I bore you, you will know where to lay the blame. Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Barret have told you some things that it will be worth your while to remember and to profit by; because they know just what they are talking about. But if I undertook to criticise what I saw this afternoon – aside from the work of the fellows who scattered the hammers and shots around – I should be out of my depth; I wouldn’t know a hurdle from a stop-watch if I met them together. What little I know about weights I am willing to talk about. But I’ll do that to-morrow, when I hope to meet the weight men on the campus. And as to football, why, if there is anything that Mr. Gardiner has forgotten to say I’ll be glad to say it before I leave.

“To-night I should like to say a few words about training and athletics in general. I am glad to see so much interest displayed in the approaching interscholastic meeting. I hope we’ll win it. We’ve lost it with good grace for two years past; I think we could win it with even better grace. But if we don’t come out on top this spring, why, I’m sure that we can give the other schools some points in the art of losing. It’s a great thing to be able to lose well; much greater than being able to win well. I think we do both well here at Hillton, but there may be room for improvement; there usually is everywhere. It’s fine to win. I’d rather win any day than to lose. But I don’t always manage it. And it’s got to be the same way with a track team or a football eleven or a crew. Sometimes it has got to come in second; perhaps third. If no crew was willing to accept second place there wouldn’t be any races, and soon there wouldn’t be any crews.

“I have a youngster at home; he isn’t very big yet – just put on his first pair of trousers the other day – but he looks a good deal like a football man already. Some day I expect he’ll come here to school. If he does I hope he will row on the crew and play on the eleven or the nine, and, if he can, run well or leap the hurdles. But if I had my way I’d fix his victories and defeats for him in about a proportion of one victory to nine defeats. For it isn’t winning that helps a fellow get a good hard grip on the world, but losing. Yes, fellows, a boy or a man will learn more wisdom – good, useful, every-day wisdom – in one defeat than he will in nine victories. It would be a hard course for Remsen, Jr., but it would make a better man out of him in the end than would a whole eight years of first prizes. So don’t despise defeat, as long as it is honorable. Learn to make the most of it. Don’t feel down-hearted for more than two minutes and a half; that’s quite long enough for regrets. Cheer the victors, and go back and try again. Don’t blame the other man because he won – it was probably your own fault; but shake hands with him and, if you must, tell him to look out for his laurels next time. Defeat ought to teach us courage, perseverance, manliness, good temper, and self-possession – all good things to learn. As I look back on my school and college days I can remember occasions when I won bigger victories through defeat than when I rowed in a winning crew or played on a winning team.

“But that’s enough about losing. You’ll think that I’m a bird of ill omen, I’m afraid. So let’s talk about something else. I wonder how many of you fellows realize the fact that all the hard work and training you have gone through with and are still undergoing is not, after all, a preparation toward winning a track meeting or a boat race? Did you ever stop to ask yourselves what the right aim of athletics is – what the chief aim should be? Some of you will answer: ‘That’s easy; the chief aim of athletics is winning.’ Wrong; the true aim of all athletics, the world around, is physical culture. Winning is of small importance; contests are only incentives. We go in for athletics because we wish to attain to a condition of physical fitness that will allow us to make the most of our lives. Athletics without training is useless; it will accomplish almost nothing good. I use the word training here in its fullest meaning: moderation in diet and exercise, temperance and regularity in daily life, cleanliness and self-restraint. We train in order that the actual athletics will benefit us. I might go through the most approved course of chest-weight and dumb-bell exercise, but if, as soon as it was over, I went to the table and stuffed my stomach full of indigestible food, drank a lot of liquor, smoked a lot of cigarettes or cigars, stayed up every night until one or two o’clock, took no outdoor exercise and breathed impure air all day, why, I might as well let the chest weights alone so far as any benefit is concerned. Athletics require training, whether we are going to compete in sports or not; and training means power to perform hard tasks with a modicum of fatigue and often with enjoyment; it enables the body to endure hardships, heat, cold, or fasting, without becoming endangered, and it clears the cobwebs out of the brain.

“Unusual strains without previous preparation will often prove injurious. Training prepares us for those strains; our ability to meet them increases as the training advances. The best training is that which trains all parts of the body in unison. Don’t allow your exercise to develop one physical portion of your body at the cost of any other; because you are going to throw weights don’t neglect your leg muscles; because you are going to try for the one-hundred-yard dash don’t neglect your arms. In short, avoid becoming a ‘specialist’ as much as possible. Keep in mind the fact that general health and not success at one feat is the end of athletic training.

“I’m doing a good deal more talking than I intended to, and I dare say I’m boring you badly, just as I feared I should. But there is one more thing that I want to touch on while I’ve got you where you can’t get away, and that – ”

“Go on! We like it!” shouted a boy at the back of the room; and the audience clapped and laughed its approval.

“Well, that’s very good of you,” Remsen continued smilingly. “But I’m about through. If I was – well, a kind of athletic dictator in this country, I should require from every fellow a verbal signature to this pledge: ‘I will always play fair!’ It isn’t a very long pledge, but it means a good deal, as you will see if you’ll consider it. If every schoolboy, whether an athlete or a grind, and every college man would sign it and stick to it, we’d never hear of one school’s having ‘severed athletic relations’ with another; there’d be no brawling in football games, and we’d never see the charge of professionalism brought against a college. And it is a pledge that we need not leave behind us when we graduate; it’s a good pledge to stick to right through life.