Phillip smiled doubtfully and shot a glance at the speaker’s face. But Guy was looking straight ahead, thoughtfully serious, as though enjoying a vision of a gridiron contest in which the players, emancipated from the iron heel of the despotic coach, were battling each as his natural impulse taught. Chester was grinning; but then he generally was grinning, thought Phillip.
“But there would always have to be rules, wouldn’t there?” he asked.
“Not at all,” answered Guy calmly. “Rules are laws; laws are unnatural mandates invented by man to govern the conduct of persons whose conscionable impulses have been so thwarted that they no longer have the power to influence.”
Chester gurgled rapturously.
“In football,” continued Guy, “there is a rule which prohibits a player from throttling his opponent or striking him with his fist. Now where is the advantage of that rule? It very often happens—I know that it has in my case, at all events—that a player can put his opponent out of the play more speedily and certainly by striking him forcibly between the eyes with the fist than by pushing him to one side. The natural impulse is to do so. Then why not do it?”
“But—but——” Phillip stuttered in his amazement. “But that would be brutal! You might—might injure the other fellow.”
“Certainly; I believe that if done scientifically and with sufficient force it would kill him. And there we are again. The natural impulse is to kill enough of the opposing team to enable you to win the game. The object of the game is to win. The surest way to win is to kill off the other team as fast as possible. But there the very persons who should do all in their power to advance the sport step in with a foolish, contradictory rule prohibiting you from slaying your man in any save one or two almost impossible methods. Any one who has played football at all knows that you can’t kill your opponent by throwing him or by pawing him on the chest with the open hand. It’s the dreariest nonsense! Consider the one or two real killings that football history shows. In each case the deed has been done either by stamping the fellow’s brains out or jumping onto his spinal column so as to break his neck, or in some way that the idiotic rules prohibit. Rules! Why, they’re the very things that are retarding the true development of the game.”
“Oh, shut up, Guy!” sputtered Chester. Phillip laughed uncertainly. Of course Bassett was only fooling, but he did it with such a straight face, thought Phillip, that any one might be deceived. They turned in at the Newell Gate and followed the path around the Locker Building. The field was already well dotted with fellows; it looked to Phillip as though every man who could beg, buy or borrow a pair of football trousers had turned out.
“Think over what I’ve said,” pleaded Guy, as they approached the group of waiting candidates for the freshman team. “You’ve got the making of a great football player, Ryerson; you start in with the most valuable asset of all, ignorance. Be true to your impulses and resist to the last drop of blood in your veins the coercion of narrow-minded, hide-bound, bigoted coaches and captains. You have a great future before you, my boy. Remain true to yourself, and Chester and I will look back to this day in which we were privileged to know you ere you were discovered to fame as the proudest day of our lives.”
A half-hour later Phillip had begun to doubt whether he was destined to cut such a wide swath in the football landscape as he had believed. His opinion of his prowess had shrunk to such modest dimensions that he was ready to acquit Chester of all such designs on him as he had momentarily suspected him of. And, moreover, he was rather glad that he had not attempted the ’varsity team, as he had at first intended doing. Physical fatigue is conducive to self-disparagement, and Phillip ached in all the bones that he had known himself the possessor of and in several the presence of which inside his anatomy came to him as a startling and painful surprise.
He had taken part, together with some half-hundred other hopefuls, in a number of strange exercises. First the candidates had been lined up on the thirty-yard mark and, at the flourish of the coach’s cap, had raced frantically at top speed to the goal line. This had been repeated exactly five times, and at the end of the last dash Phillip sank down onto the turf and hung his tongue out. Falling on the ball, in all its variations, had followed. As Phillip had never attempted the feat before, his success was negative, judged from the coach’s standpoint, but really wonderful in other ways. He found it very thrilling and was ready to believe that as an exercise it was far ahead of any method he had tried. Punting succeeded falling on the ball, and from this he would have extracted not a little enjoyment had it not been that it hurt him terribly every time he lifted his foot into the air. At last practice was over for that day and he wandered out of the crowd looking rather dejected. He had given his name and had been instructed to report the next afternoon at the same time. But anticipation of the next day’s proceedings occasioned him no delight, and he wondered whether second-hand football togs, worn only once, had any market value.
Chester and Guy discovered him and dragged him across to the ’varsity gridiron, in spite of his emphatic requests to be allowed to go home and study.
“Study?” cried Chester. “How you do talk! What, in the name of all that’s sensible, do you want to grind on a nice afternoon like this for? Come on; we’ll go over and sit on the seats and criticize the ’varsity chaps. How did you get on?”
“Not very well, I reckon,” answered Phillip. “I couldn’t get the hang of falling on the ball, and when I tried to kick my legs ached so I couldn’t. In fact, I ache mighty near all over.”
Chester grinned and Guy raised his eyebrows in polite surprise. “You’ll feel better to-morrow,” assured the former, and the latter murmured: “ ’Tis sweet to die for one’s class.”
Beyond the fence the ’varsity candidates were punting and catching and jogging about the field in little groups that paused for a moment over the ball and, at the signal, shot forward as though about to tear down the gridiron, but who instead suddenly appeared to change their minds and paused, took breath and did it all over again. There were five coaches present, and each took his turn at interrupting the captain, who was instructing an assortment of backs in the art of getting down under kicks.
Phillip seated himself beside his companions on the little bench by the jumping standard and stretched his tired legs before him with a sigh of luxurious content. The scene interested and pleased him. The grass was still green, the white clouds floated lazily overhead, the river was blue with queer bronze ripples, and the breeze that stirred the damp hair over his forehead was fresh and invigourating. For a time he divided his attention between the doings of the crimson-stockinged candidates and the conversation of the two beside him. But presently his thoughts wandered off into a series of veritable day-dreams. Very pleasant dreams they were, in which he saw himself successful and popular, and heard the plaudits of the admiring multitude. Just what variety of college fame he had won did not appear; but whatever it was it was extremely satisfying, and Phillip saw himself bowing before the storm of approval with a nice mixture of pride and modesty. They were calling his name wildly, enthusiastically:
“Ryerson! Ryerson! Ryer——!”
He opened his eyes and sat up with a start. Chester was shaking him by the neck and laughing.
“Wake up, you sleepy cuss, and answer to your name!”
“I—I don’t think I was asleep,” murmured Phillip.
“Well,