Professor Addicks bowed and smiled, standing very straight on the platform with one gnarled hand on the top of the desk. “It gives me much pleasure to see you young gentlemen all back here again and all looking so well,” said he. “I trust you have spent a pleasant Summer and that you have returned eager for work – and play. Someone – was it not our own Mark Twain? – said that play is what we like to do, work what we have to do. But he didn’t say that we can’t make play of our work, young gentlemen. I can think of nothing that would please me more than to overhear you say a few years from now: ‘I had a good time at Parkinson. There was football, you know, and baseball and tennis; and then there was Old Addicks’ Greek Class!’”
A roar of laughter greeted that, laughter in which the Professor joined gently.
“Oh, I know what you call me,” he went on smilingly. “But I like to think that the term ‘Old’ is applied with some degree of – may I say affection?”
Clapping then, and cries of “Yes, sir!”
“Age, young gentlemen, has its advantages as well as its disadvantages, and amongst them is the accumulation of experiences, which are things from which we gain knowledge. I am old enough to have had many experiences, and I trust that I have gained some slight degree of knowledge. I make no boast as to that, however. In fact, I find that I am considerably less certain of my wisdom now than I was when I was many years younger. Looking back, I see that the zenith of my erudition was reached shortly after I had attained the age of the oldest of you, that is, at about the age of twenty-one years. Today I am far more humble as to my attainments. But, young gentlemen, there is one thing that I have learned and learned well, and that is this: each of us can make his work what he pleases, a task or a pleasure. Some of you won’t believe that now, but you’ll all learn eventually that it is so. And if you make your work a task you are putting difficulties in your own way, whereas if you make it a pleasure you are automatically increasing your power for work. If it is a pleasure you want to do it, and what we want to do we do with a will. Therefore, young gentlemen, bring sufficient of the element of play to your studies to make them agreeable. You go through hard and difficult exertions for the exercise of your bodies and call it fun. Why, then, pull a long face when you approach the matter of exercising your minds? If one is play, why not the other? A word to the wise is sufficient. I have given you many words. Let us consider the pleasures before us.”
There was no class work that day, and after they had had the morrow’s lessons indicated and had listed the books required for the courses in Greek and Latin the fellows departed to gather again in another room before another instructor. By noon Ira had faced all his instructors, his head was swimming with a mass of information as to hours, courses of reading and so on, and he had made quite a formidable list of books and stationery to be purchased. He returned to Mrs. Magoon’s and spent a half-hour filling in a schedule card, and then, as Nead hadn’t returned, set off by himself to The Eggery for dinner. Now that the big school dining room was open in Alumni Hall, The Eggery was rather deserted as to students. The bulk of the patrons today were clerks and shopkeepers.
After dinner he made various purchases of scratch-pads, blue-books, pencils and similar articles, bought several books at a second-hand store and paid a visit to the First National Bank of Warne. There he made a deposit of all the money he had with him save enough change to meet immediate demands, signed his name where the teller pointed and emerged the proud possessor of his first check book. By that time it was nearly three, and, having nothing especial to interest him, he crossed the campus, made his way around Parkinson Hall and past the little laboratory building and found himself facing the broad expanse of level and still verdant turf known as the Playfield.
There was some twelve acres here, in shape a rectangle, with one corner cut off by Apple Street, which began at the end of Linden Street and proceeded at a tangent to the Cumner Road, the latter forming the northern boundary of the field. Directly in front of Ira were the tennis courts, a dozen in all, of which half were clay and half turf. To the right of the courts was a quarter-mile running track enclosing the gridiron and beyond that were the baseball diamonds, three in number. A sizeable grandstand flanked the gridiron and a smaller one stood behind the home-plate of the ’varsity diamond. Already the playfield was well sprinkled with fellows. Several white-clad youths were practising flights over the high-hurdles, another was jogging around the farther turn of the track, the tennis courts were fairly well occupied and the football candidates were beginning to emerge from the nearby gymnasium and gather in front of the stand.
Ira stopped and watched the tennis for awhile and then gave his attention to the hurdlers. He had never seen hurdlers in action before and he looked on with interest while one after another went springing by with long strides and queer steps; stride, stride, stride, step and over; stride, stride, stride, step and over! Ira wondered what would happen if he ran up to one of those barriers and tried to stick one leg across and double the other one behind him. He chuckled at the mental picture he got! One of the hurdlers interested him particularly. He was a much shorter and chunkier lad than the others; in age probably seventeen. There was no useless flesh on him, but he was very solidly built and had more weight than the usual boy of his age. As a hurdler he was persevering rather than brilliant. He struck four hurdles out of the ten invariably, each time throwing himself out of his stride and just saving himself from a fall, but he finished through with a fine, dogged patience, rested and went at it again.
“If,” thought Ira, “I was selecting a fellow to win one of these hurdle races I wouldn’t pick him, but if I was choosing a chap to – to hunt for the South Pole or take on a hard job and finish it I guess he’d be the one!”
When the hurdlers had picked up their sweaters and gone panting back to the gymnasium Ira turned toward the grandstand. By this time a half-hundred boys in football togs were assembled on the field, while twice that number were seated in the stand to watch the first practice of the year. Ira found a seat a little removed from the throng and viewed the gathering. Even as he turned his eyes toward the candidates their number was increased by the arrival of some eighteen or twenty others accompanied by a man of perhaps thirty years whose air of authority plainly stamped him as the coach. By his side was a strapping youth with broad shoulders, a slim waist and sturdy legs who was quite as plainly the captain. He had tawny hair, light eyes and a lean, sun-browned face that, without being handsome, was striking. He looked, Ira decided, like a born leader. And those shoulders and that deep chest and the powerful legs under the brown-and-white ringed stockings suggested that he was as capable physically as any other way. A rotund man in brown denim overalls pushed a wheelbarrow around the corner of the stand and from it unloaded a surprising amount of paraphernalia; a canvas bag containing a half-dozen scuffed footballs, many grey blankets, a water bucket and several shining new tin dippers, head-guards, several pairs of shoes, a bunch of leather laces, a nickel-plated horn with a rubber bulb attached and a leather case whose contents were not divulged that afternoon but which Ira later discovered to hold adhesive tape, bandages, phials and similar first-aid requisites.
A tall, immaculate youth in street attire joined coach and captain. He carried a square of light board to which were held by a clamp a number of sheets of paper. Ira surmised correctly that he was the team manager. A short conference ensued between the trio and then things awoke to action.
“First squad down the field,” called the coach. “New candidates this way, please!”
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