At Good Old Siwash Part 10

They've had an agreement at Siwash. They're going to approach the Fres.h.i.+es under strict rules. No parties. No dinners at the houses. No abductions. No big, tall talk about pledging to-night or staggering through a twilight life to a frowzy-headed and unimportant old age in some b.u.m bunch. All done away with. Everything nice and orderly.

Freshman arrives. You take his name and address. Call on him, attended by referees. Maintain a general temperature of not more than sixty-five when you meet him on the campus. Buy him one ten-cent cigar during the fall and introduce him to one girl--age, complexion and hypnotic power to be carefully regulated by the rus.h.i.+ng committee. Then you send him a little engraved invitation to amalgamate with you; and when he answers, per the self-addressed envelope inclosed, you are to love him like a brother for the next three and a half years. Gee! how that makes me ache!

Think of it! And at old Siwash, too!--Siwash, where we never considered a pledge safe until we had him tied up in a back room, with our colors on him and a guard around the house! That settles me. I've always yearned to go back and cavort over the campus in the fall when college opened; but not for me no more! Why, if I went back there and got into the rus.h.i.+ng game, first thing I knew they'd have me run up before a pan-h.e.l.lenic council, charged with giving an eligible Freshman more than two fingers when I shook hands with him; and I'd be ridden out of town on a rail for rus.h.i.+ng in an undignified manner.

Rus.h.i.+ng? What's rus.h.i.+ng? Oh, yes; I forgot that you never partic.i.p.ated in that delicious form of insanity known as a fall term in college.

Rus.h.i.+ng is a cross between proposing to a girl and abducting a coyote.

Rus.h.i.+ng a man for a frat is trying to make him believe that to belong to it is joy and inspiration, and to belong to any other means misery and an early tomb; that all the best men in college either belong to your frat or couldn't get in; that you're the best fellows on earth, and that you're crazy to have him, and that he is a coming Senator; that you can't live without him; that the other gang can't appreciate him; that you never ask men twice; that you don't care much for him anyway, and that you are just as likely as not to withdraw the spike any minute if you should happen to get tired of the cut of his trousers; that your crowd can make him cla.s.s president and the other crowds can make him fine mausoleums; that you love him like real brothers and that he has already bound himself in honor to pledge--and that if he doesn't he will regret it all his life; and, besides, you will punch his head if he doesn't put on the colors. That's rus.h.i.+ng for you.

What's my crowd? Why, the Eta Bita Pie, of course. Couldn't you tell that from my skysc.r.a.per brow? We Eta Bites are so much better than any other frat that we break down and cry now and then when we think of the poor chaps who can't belong to us. We're bigger, grander, n.o.bler and tighter about the chest than any other gang. We've turned out more Senators, Congressmen, Supreme Justices, near-Presidents, captains of industry, foreign amba.s.sadors and football captains than any two of them. We own more frat houses, win more college elections, know more about neckties and girls, wear louder vests and put more cross-hatch effects on our neophytes than any three of them. We're so immeasurably ahead of everything with a Greek-letter name that every Freshman of taste and discrimination turns down everything else and waits until we crook our little finger at him. Of course, sometimes we make a mistake and ask some fellow that isn't a man of taste and discrimination; he proves it by going into some other frat; and that, of course, keeps all the men of poor judgment out of our gang and puts them in the others.

Regular automatic dispensation of Providence, isn't it?

It's been a long time since I had a chance to gather with the brethren back at Siwash and agree with them how glorious we are, but this note brings it all back. My! how I'd like this minute to go back about ten years and cl.u.s.ter around our big grate fire, which used to make the Delta Kaps so crazy with envy. Those were the good old days when we came back to college in the fall, looked over the haycrop in the Freshman cla.s.s, picked out the likeliest seed repositories, and then proceeded to carve them out from the clutches of a round dozen rival frats, each one crazy to get a spike into every new student who looked as if he might be president of the Senior cla.s.s and an authority on cotillons some day. No namby-pamby, drop-three-and-carry-one crochet effects about our rus.h.i.+ng those days! We just stood up on our hind legs and sc.r.a.pped it out. For concentrated, triple-distilled, double-X excitement, the first three weeks of college, with every frat breaking its collective neck to get a habeas corpus on the same six or eight men, had a suffragette riot in the House of Parliament beaten down to a dove-coo.

There was nothing that made us love a Freshman so hard as to have about six other frats after him. I've seen women buy hats the same way.

They've got to beat some other woman to a hat before they can really appreciate it. And when we could swat half a dozen rival frats over the heart by waltzing a good-looking young chap down the walk to chapel with our colors on his coat, and could watch them turning green and purple and clawing for air--well, I guess it beat getting elected to Congress or marrying an heiress-apparent for pure, unadulterated, unspeckled joy!

Compet.i.tion was getting mighty scarce in the country even then. There were understandings between railroad magnates and beef kings and biscuit makers--and even the ministers had a scale of wedding fees. But compet.i.tion had a happy home on our campus. About the best we had been able to do had been to agree not to burn down each other's frat houses while we were haltering the Freshmen. I've seen nine frats, with a total of one hundred and fifty members, sitting up nights for a week at a time working out plans to despoil each other of a runty little fellow in a pancake hat, whose only accomplishment was playing the piano with his feet. One frat wanted him and that started the others.

Of course we'd have got along better if we'd put the whole Freshman cla.s.s in cold storage until we could have found out who the good men were and who the spoiled fruit might be. We were just as likely to fall in love with a suit of clothes as with a future cla.s.s orator. We took in one man once because he bought a pair of patent-leather tan shoes in his Junior year. We argued that, if he had the nerve to wear the things to his Y. M. C. A. meetings, there must be some originality in him after all--and we took a chance. We won. But it's a risky business. Once five frats rushed a fellow for a month because of the beautiful clothes he wore--and just after the victorious bunch had initiated him a clothing house came down on the young man and took the whole outfit. You can't always tell at first sight. But then, I don't know but that college fraternities exercise as much care and judgment in picking brothers as women do in picking husbands. Many a woman has married a fine mustache or a bunch of n.o.ble clothes and has taken the thing that wore them on spec. That's one more than we ever did. You could fool us with clothes; but the man who came to Siwash with a mustache had to flock by himself.

He and his whiskers were considered to be enough company for each other.

There were plenty of frats in Siwash to make things interesting in the fall. There were the Alfalfa Delts, who had a house in the same block with us and were sn.o.bbish just because they had initiated a locomotive works, two railroads and a pickle factory. Then there were the Sigh Whoopsilons, who got to Siwash first and who regarded the rest of us with the same kindly tolerance with which the Indians regarded Daniel Boone. And there were the Chi Yis, who fought society hard and always had their picture taken for the college annual in dress suits. Many's the time I've loaned my dress suit to drape over some green young Chi Yi, so that the annual picture could show an unbroken row of open-faced vests. And there were the s.h.i.+ Delts, who were a bold, bad bunch; and the Fli Gammas, who were good, pious boys, about as exciting as a smooth-running prayer-meeting; and the Delta Kappa Sonof.a.guns, who got every political office either by electing a member or initiating one; and the Delta Flushes; and the Mu Kow Moos; the Sigma Numerous; and two or three others that we didn't lie awake nights worrying about. Every one of these bunches had one burning ambition--that was to initiate the very best men in the Freshman cla.s.s every fall. That made it necessary for us, in order to maintain our proud position, to disappoint each one of them every year and to make ourselves about as popular as the directors of a fresh-air and drinking-water trust.

Of course we always disappointed them. Wouldn't admit it if we didn't.

But, holy mackerel! what a job it was! Herding a bunch of green and timid and nervous and contrary youngsters past all the temptations and pitfalls and confidence games and blarneyfests put up by a dozen frats, and landing the bunch in a crowd that it had never heard of two weeks before, is as bad as trying to herd a bunch of whales into a fishpond with nothing but hot air for gads. It took diplomacy, pugnacity and psychological moments, I tell you; and it took more: it took ingenuity and inventiveness and cheek and second sight and cool heads in time of trouble and long heads on the job, from daybreak to daybreak. I'd rather go out and sell battles.h.i.+ps to farmers, so far as the toughness of the job is concerned, than to tackle the job of persuading a wise young high-school product with two chums in another frat that my bunch and he were made for each other. What did he care for our glorious history? We had to use other means of getting him. We had to hypnotize him, daze him, waft him off his feet; and if necessary we had to get the other frats to help us. How? Oh, you never know just how until you have to; and then you slip your scheme wheels into gear and do it. You just have to; that's all. It's like running away from a bear. You know you can't, but you've got to; and so you do.

Makes me smile now when I think of some of the desperate crises that used to roll up around old Eta Bita Pie like a tornado convention and threaten to engulf the bright, beautiful world and turn it into a howling desert, peopled only by Delta Kappa Whoops and other undesirables. I'm far enough away, now, to forget the heart-bursting suspense and to see only the humor of it. Once I remember the s.h.i.+ Delts, in spite of everything we could do, managed so to befog the brain of the Freshman cla.s.s president that he cut a date with us and sequestered himself in the s.h.i.+ Delt house in an upper back room, with the horrible intention of pledging himself the next morning. Four of the largest s.h.i.+ Delts sat on the front porch that evening and the telephone got paralysis right after supper. They had told the boy that if he joined them he would probably have to leave school in his Junior year to become governor; and he didn't want to see any of us for fear we would wake him up. I chuckle yet when I think of those four big bruisers sitting on the front porch and guarding their property while I was s.h.i.+nning up the corner post of the back porch, leaving a part of my trousers fluttering on a nail and ordering the youngster in a blood-curdling whisper to hand down his coat, unless he wanted to lose forever his chance of being captain of the football team in his Soph.o.m.ore year. He weighed the governors.h.i.+p against the captaincy for a minute, but the right triumphed and he handed down his coat. I sewed a big bunch of our colors on it, discoursed with him fraternally while balancing on the slanting roof, shook hands with him in a solemn, ritualistic way and bade him be firm the next morning. When the s.h.i.+ Delts came in and found that Freshman pledged to another gang they had a convulsion that lasted a week; and to this day they don't know how the crime was committed.

There was another Freshman, I remember, who was led violently astray by the Chi Yis and was about to pledge to them under the belief that their gang contained every man of note in the United States. We had to get him over to the house and palm off a lot of our alumni as leading actors and authors, who had dropped in to dinner, before he was sufficiently impressed to reason with us. Of course this is not what the English would call "rully sporting, don't you know!" but in our consciences it was all cla.s.sified as revenge. We got the same doses. Pillings, of the Mu Kow Moos, pulled one of our spikes out in beautiful fas.h.i.+on once by impersonating our landlord. He rushed up the steps just as a Freshman rushee was starting down all alone and demanded the rent for six months on the spot, threatening to throw us out into the street that minute.

The Freshman hesitated just long enough to get his clothes out of the house, and we didn't know for a month what had frozen his feet.

The Fli Gams weren't so slow, either. They found out once that one of the men we were just about to land had a great disgust for two of our men. What did one of their alumni do but happen craftily over our way and mention in the most casual manner the undying admiration that the boy had for those two? Of course we sandwiched him between them for a week--and of course we were pained and grieved when he tossed us into the discard; but we got even with them the next year. We picked up an eminent young pugilist, who made his headquarters in the next town, and for a little consideration and a suit of clothes that was a regular college yell we got him to hang around the campus for a week. We rushed him terrifically for a day and then managed to let the Fli Gams get him.

They rushed him for a week in spite of our carefully regulated indignation and then proposed to him. When he told them that he might consider coming to school--as soon as he had gone South and had cleaned up a couple of good sc.r.a.ps--they let out an awful shriek and fumigated the house. They were nice young chaps, but no judge of a pugilist. They expected to be able to see his hoofs.

Well, it was this way every year all fall. Ding-dong, bing-bang, give and take, no quarter and pretty nearly everything fair. As I said, it wasn't considered exactly proper to burn a rival frat house in order to distract the attention of the occupants while they were entertaining a Freshman, but otherwise we did pretty nearly what we pleased to each other--only being careful to do it first. Of course a lot of things are fair in love and war that would not be considered strictly ethical in a game of croquet. And rus.h.i.+ng a Freshman is as near like love as anything I know of. It isn't that we love the Freshman so much. When I think of some of the trash we fought over and lost I have to laugh. But we couldn't bear the idea of losing him. To sit by and watch another gang win the affections of a young fellow who you know is designed by Nature for your frat and the football team; to note him gradually breaking off the desperate chumminess that has grown up between you in the last forty-eight hours; to think that in another day he will have on the pledge colors of another fraternity and will be lost to you forever and ever and ever, and then some--what is losing a mere girl to some other fellow compared with that? Of course I realize now that, even if a Freshman does join another frat, you can eventually get chummy with him again after college days are over if you find him worth crossing the street to see; and I find myself lending money to s.h.i.+ Delts and borrowing it from Delta Whoops just as freely as if they were Eta Bites.

But somehow you don't learn these things in time to save your poor old nerves in college.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Naturally I was somewhat dazzled _Page 147_]

When I was in school the Alfalfa Delts, the Sigh Whoopsilons and the Chi Yis were giving us a horrible race. I'm willing to admit it now, though I'd have fought Jeffries before doing it ten years ago. Each fall was one long whirlwind. The President of the United States in an office-seekers' convention would have had a placid time compared with the Freshmen. We didn't exactly use real axes on each other and we didn't actually tear any Freshman in two pieces, but we came as near the limit as was comfortable. No frat was safe for a minute with its guests.

If you tried to feed 'em there was kerosene in the ice cream. If you entertained them some frat with a better quartet worked outside the house. If you took them out to call the parlor would fill up with riffraff in no time; and if you took your eye off your victim for a minute he was gone--some other gang had got him. I sometimes think some of the crowds knew how to palm Freshmen the way magicians do, from the way they disappeared.

Even the girls took a hand in it. When I was a Soph.o.m.ore I was intrusted with the task of leading a Freshman three blocks down to Browning Hall to call on one of our solid girls, and before I had gone a block two Senior girls met us. They were bare acquaintances of mine, being strong Delta Kap. allies, and they usually managed to see me only after a severe effort; but this time you'd have thought I was a whole regiment of fiances. They literally fell on my neck. It was cruel of me, they declared, to be so unsociable. There I was, a football hero--I'd just broken my rib on the scrub team--and every girl in school was dying to tell me how grand it was to suffer for one's college; and yet I wouldn't so much as hint that I wanted to come to the sorority parties--and lots more talk of the same kind. Naturally I was somewhat dazzled and I'd walked about half a block with the prettiest one before I noticed that the other one was steering Fres.h.i.+e the other way. I turned around and never even said "Good day" to that girl; but it was too late. About a dozen Delta Kaps appeared out of the ground and tried to look surprised as they gathered around that scared little Freshman and engulfed him. We never saw him again--that is, in his innocent condition--and the boys wouldn't even trust me with the pledges we were rus.h.i.+ng around for bait the rest of the fall term. Bait? Oh, yes. Sometimes we'd pledge a man on the quiet and leave him out a week or two, so that plenty of frats could bid him--made them appreciate his worth, you know, and got every one well acquainted.

By the time I was a Senior the compet.i.tion was desperate. We spent the summers scouring the country for prospects and we spent the first week of school smuggling our trophies into our houses and pledging them, without giving the other fellow a look in--that is, we tried to. We came back fairly strong in my Senior year, with a good bunch of prospects; but the one that excited us most was a telegram from Snooty Vincent in Chicago. It was brief and erratic, like Snooty himself, and read as follows:

Freshman named Smith will register from Chicago. Son of old man Smith, multimillionaire. Kid's a comer. Get him sure! SNOOTY.

That was all. One of the half million Smiths of Chicago was coming to college--age, weight, complexion, habits and time of arrival unknown.

That telegram qualified Snooty for the paresis ward. We didn't even know what Smith his millionaire father was. The world is full of Smiths who are pestered by automobile agents. All we knew was the fact that we had to find him, grab him, sequester him where no meddling Alfalfa Delt or Chi Yi could find him, and make him fall in love with us inside of forty-eight hours. Then we could lead him forth, with the colors and his _art-nouveau_ clothes on, spread the glad news--and there wouldn't have to be any more rus.h.i.+ng that fall. We'd just sit back and take our pick.

We sat back and built brains full of air-castles for about three minutes--and then got busy. It was matriculation day. There were half a dozen trains to come yet from Chicago on various roads. We had to meet them all, pick out the right man by his aura or by the way the porter looked when he tipped him, and grab him out from under the ravenous foe.

The next train was due in ten minutes and the depot was a mile away. We sent Crawford down. He was trying for the distance runs anyway.

The rest of us went out to show a couple of cla.s.sy boys from a big prep school how to register and find a room, and pick out textbooks; and incidentally how to distinguish a crowd of magnificent young student leaders from eleven wrangling bunches of miscellaneous thickheads, who wouldn't like anything better than to rope in a couple of good men to teach them the ways of the world. We were succeeding in this to the queen's taste, having accidentally dropped in on our porch with the pair, when young Crawford rushed up green with despair and took the rus.h.i.+ng committee inside. He almost cried when he told us. He'd watched the train as carefully as he could, he said, but he couldn't be everywhere at once; and so a couple of Mu Kow Moos had got Smith. He knew it because he had heard them ask what his name was and he had told them Smith. He'd pretty nearly wrecked his brain trying to think of an excuse to b.u.t.t in, but they had taken the boy away and he'd run all the way to the house to see if something couldn't be done.

Petey Simmons had listened, sitting crosslegged on the windowseat, which was a habit of his. Petey was a Senior and his deep studies in rhetoric during his four years in the frat had given him a great power of expression. He turned to the despairing Crawford and reduced him to a cinder with one look.

"So you couldn't think of any excuse to b.u.t.t in!" he remarked slowly, "Say, Crawford, if you saw a young lady falling through the ice you'd write to her mother for permission to cheer her up. Which way did they go?"

"They're coming this way," said what was left of Crawford.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he used it _Page 151_]

Petey grabbed his hat and discharged himself toward the depot. We brought in those big prep school boys and tried to give them the time of their lives, but our hearts weren't in it. We were thinking of those Mu Kow Moos--that frat of all others--blissfully towing home a prize they'd stumbled onto and didn't know anything about! We thought of those beautifully designed air-castles we were hoping to move into and we got pumpkins in our throats. Stung on the first day of school by a bunch that had to wear their pins on their neckties to keep from being mistaken for a literary society! Oh, thunder! We went in to dinner all smeared up with gloom. Then the door opened and Petey came in. He was five feet five, Petey was, but he stooped when he came under the chandelier. He had a suitcase in one hand and a stranger in the other.

"Boys," he said, "I want you to meet Mr. Smith, of Chicago."

At first glance you wouldn't have taken Smith for a perambulating national bank, with a wheelbarrow of spending-money every month. He was well-enough dressed and all that, but he didn't loom up in any mountainous fas.h.i.+on as to looks. He was runty and his hair was a kind of discouraged red. He had freckles, too, and he was so bashful that his voice blushed when he used it. He didn't have a word to say until dinner, when he said "thank you" to Sam, the waiter. Altogether he was so meek that he had us worried; but then, as Allie Bangs said, you can't always tell about these multimillionaires. Some of them didn't have the nerve of a mouse. He'd seen millionaires in New York, he said, who were afraid of cab drivers.

"And besides," said Petey, when a few of us were talking it over after dinner, "I'd never have got him if he hadn't been so meek. I was determined that no Mu Kow Moo was going to hang anything on us; and when I saw the three of them coming I waded right in. Allison and Briggs, those two dumb Juniors, were doing the steering. It was like taking candy from the baby. I just fell right into them and took about five minutes to tell those two how glad I was to see them back. I introduced myself to Smith; and--would you believe it?--he was still carrying his suitcase! I grabbed it and apologized for not having carried it all the way up from the station. You should have seen those yaps scowl. They wanted to shred me up, but I never noticed them again. I pointed out all the sights to Smith and told him his friends had written me about him.

There was so little room on the sidewalk that I suggested we two walk ahead; and I shoved him right into the middle of the walk and made Allison and Briggs fall behind. I had a piece of luck just then. Old Pete and his sawed-off cab came by and I flagged him in a minute. I shoved Smith in and got in after him. Then I told the two babes that I could take care of Smith all right and that there was no need of their walking clear up to the house. After that I shut the door and we came away. If looks could kill I'd be tuning up my harp this minute. Say, if I didn't have any more nerve than those two I'd get a permit from the city to live. And all the time Smith never made a kick. I had him hypnotized. Now I'm going in and make him jump through a hoop."

We should have been very happy--and we would have been, but just then Symington came in with some astounding news. The Alfalfa Delts had a man named Smith, of Chicago, over at their house. He was on the front porch, with the whole gang around him; and from the looks of things they'd have him benevolently a.s.similated before twenty-four hours. Naturally this created a tremendous lot of emotion around our house. It was a serious situation. We might have the right Smith and then again we might have a Smith who would be borrowing money for car fare inside of ten minutes.

We had to find out which Smith it was before we tampered with his young affections.

Did you ever snuggle up to a young captain of industry and ask him who his father was and whether he was important enough in the business world to be indicted by the Government for anything? That was the job we tackled that night. Smith was meek enough, but somehow even Petey's nerve had its limits. We approached the subject from every corner of the compa.s.s. We led up to it, we beat around it--and finally we got desperate and led the boy up to it. But he was too shy to come down with the information. Yes, he lived in Chicago. Oh, on the North Side. Yes, he guessed the stock market was stronger. Yes, the Annex was a great hotel. No, he didn't know whether they were going to put a tower on the Board of Trade or not. Yes, the lake Sh.o.r.e Drive was dusty in summer.--[Good!]--He wouldn't care to live on it.--[Bah!]--Altogether he was as unsatisfactory to pump as a well full of dusty old brickbats.

Just then Rawlins, who had been scouting around seeing what he could run against in the dark of the moon, arrived with the stunning information that the Chi Yis had a man named Smith, of Oak Park, at their house and that every corner of the lawn was guarded by picked men!

When we got this news most of us went upstairs and bathed our heads in cold water. Oak Park sounded even more suspicious than Chicago. It's a solid mahogany suburb and everybody there is somebody or other. You have to get initiated into the place just as if it were a secret society, it's so exclusive. That meant there were three Smiths from Chicago in school. We had only one Smith. We had a one-in-three shot.

We stuck the colors on the boys from the big prep school just to keep our hands in and went to bed so nervous that we only slept in patches.

Still, two Chicago Smiths in other frat houses were better than one. It meant that at least one frat wasn't sure of its man. Maybe neither one was. Our scouts had reported that, from what they could pick up, neither Smith had it on our Smith much in looks. That could only mean one thing: there had been a leak in the telegraph office again. What show has a guileless sixty-five-dollar-a-month operator against a bunch of crafty young diplomatists? They had read our telegram and were after the same Smith that we were.

By morning the suspense around the house could have been shoveled out with a pitchfork. If one of the other frats had the right Smith and knew it, and had pledged him during the night, there was positively no use in living any longer. Petey, who had shared his room with our Smith, reported that he was now like wax in our hands. But that didn't comfort us much. It was too confoundedly puzzling. Maybe we had the heir to a subtreasury panting to join us and maybe his freckles were his fortune.

All Petey had gouged out of him during the night was the fact that his father wanted him to come to Siwash because it was a nice, quiet place.

Oh, yes; it was deadly calm!

It couldn't have been more than seven o'clock when the telephone rang.

Petey answered it. A relative of Smith's was at the hotel and had heard the boy was at our house. Would we please tell him to come right down?

Petey said he would and then rang off. Then he grabbed the 'phone again and asked Central excitedly why she had cut him off. Central said she hadn't, but of course she rang the other line again.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Petey blandly. "This is the Alfalfa Delt house?"

"No; it's the Chi Yi house," was the answer. Petey put the receiver up contentedly and we all turned handsprings over the library table. Fifty per cent safe, anyway. The Chi Yis were trying to sort out the Smiths, too.

It was an hour before anything else happened. Then Matheson of the Alfalfa Delts, a ponderous personage, who wore a silk hat on Sunday and did instructing, came over and asked if we had a man named Smith with us. He was to be a pupil of his, he said, and he wanted to arrange his work. Of course Matheson was hoping to get a green man at the door, but he didn't have any luck. Bangs himself let him in and let him read two or three magazines through in the library while we turned some more handsprings--in the dining room this time. The Alfalfa Delts were fis.h.i.+ng, too. It was a fair field and no favors.