Pieces of Hate; And Other Enthusiasms - Heywood Hale Broun

Скачать книгу

head of curly hair (he never wore a headguard) flashing in and out across the field, the hands clapping together, the plaintive voice calling 'All right, all right, give me the ball!' when a game was going badly, and then carrying it alone to touchdown after touchdown."

      Although we have seen all of Yale's recent big games we recognized none of that except "the plaintive voice" and even that would have been more familiar if it had been used to say "Moral victory!" We waited to find Mr. Minnigerode explaining that of course he was referring to the annual contest with the Springfield Training School, but he did no such thing and went straight ahead with the pretense that football at Yale is romantic. To be sure, he attempts to justify this attitude by letting us see a good deal of the gridiron doings through the eyes of a bull terrier who could not well be expected to be captious. Champ, named after the Yale chess team, came by accident to the field just as Curly Corliss was off on one of his long runs. Yes, it was a game against the scrubs. "Some one came tearing along and lunged at Curly as he went by, apparently trying to grab him about the legs. Champ cast all caution to the winds. Interfere with Curly, would he? Well, Champ guessed not! Like an arrow from a bow Champ hurled himself through the air and fastened his jaws firmly in the seat of the offender's pants, in a desperate effort to prevent him from further molesting Curly."

      Champ was immediately adopted by the team as mascot. It seems to us he deserved more, for this was the first decent piece of interference seen on Yale field in years. The associate mascot was Jimmy, a little newsboy, who also took football at New Haven seriously. His romanticism, like that of Champ, was understandable. Hadn't Curly Corliss once saved his life? We need not tell you that he had. "Jimmy," as Mr. Minnigerode tells the story, "started to run across the street, without noticing the street-car lumbering around the corner… and then before he knew it Jimmy tripped and fell, and the car was almost on top of him grinding its brakes. Jimmy never knew exactly what happened in the next few seconds, but he heard people shouting, and then something struck him and he was dragged violently away by the seat of the pants. When he could think connectedly again he was sitting on the curb considerably battered – and Curly was sitting beside him, with his trousers torn, nursing a badly cut hand."

      We remember there was an incident like that in Cambridge once, only the man who rescued the newsboy was not the football captain but a substitute on the second team. We have forgotten his name. Unlike Corliss of Yale, the Harvard man did not bother to pick up the newsboy. Instead he seized the street car and threw it for a loss.

* * * * *

      The first half was over and Princeton led by a score of 10 to 0. Things looked blue for Yale. Neither mascot was on hand. Yale was trying to win with nothing but students. Where was little Jimmy the newsboy? If you must know he was in the hospital, for he had been run over again. The boy could not seem to break himself of the habit. Unfortunately he had picked out the afternoon of the Princeton game when all the Yale players were much too busy trying to stop Tigers to have any time to interfere with traffic. It was only an automobile this time and Jimmy escaped with a mere gash over one eye. Champ, the bull terrier who caused the mixup, was uninjured. "I'm all right now," Jimmy told the doctor, "honest I am – can I go – I gotta take Champ out to the game – he's the mascot and they can't win without him – please, Mister, let me go – I guess they need us bad out there."

      Apparently the crying need of Yale football is not so much a coaching system as a good leash to keep the mascots from getting run over. Champ and Jimmy rushed into the locker room just as the big Blue team was about to trot out for the second half. After that there was nothing to it. Yale won by a score of 12 to 10. "Curly clapped his hands together," writes Mr. Minnigerode in describing the rally, "and kept calling out 'Never mind the signal! Give me the ball' in his plaintive voice" —

      This sounds more like Yale football than anything else in the book. However, it sufficed. Curly made two touchdowns and all the Yale men went to Mory's and sang "Curly Corliss, Curly Corliss, he will leave old Harvard scoreless." It is said that a legend is now gaining ground in New Haven that Yale will not defeat Harvard again until it is led by some other captain whose name rhymes with "scoreless." The current captain of the Elis is named Jordan. The only thing that rhymes with is "scored on."

      Still, as Professor Billy Phelps has taught his students to say, football isn't everything. Perhaps something of Sparta has gone from Yale, for a few years or forever, but just look at the Yale poets and novelists all over the place. There is a new kindliness at New Haven. Take for instance the testimony of the same "Big Year" when it describes a touching little scene between Curly Corliss, the captain of the Yale football team, and his room mate as they are revealed in the act of retiring for the night:

      "'Angel!'

      "'Yeah,' very sleepily.

      "'They all seem to get over it!'

      "'Over what?'

      "'The fellows who have graduated,' Curly explained. 'I guess they all feel pretty poor when they leave, but they get over it right away. It's just like changing into a new suit, I expect.'

      "'Yeah, I guess so'…

      "'Well, goo' night, little feller'…

      "'Goo' night, Teddy.'"

      But we do wish Mr. Minnigerode had been a little more explicit and had told us who tucked them in.

      IX

      FOR OLD NASSAU

      Wadsworth Camp, we find, has done almost as much for Princeton in his novel, "The Guarded Heights," as Meade Minnigerode has accomplished for Yale in "The Big Year."

      George Morton might never have gone to any college if it had not been for Sylvia Planter. He was enamored of her from the very beginning when old Planter engaged him to accompany his daughter on rides, but his admiration did not become articulate until she fell off her horse. She seems to have done it extremely well. "He saw her horse refuse," writes Mr. Camp, "straightening his knees and sliding in the marshy ground. He watched Sylvia, with an ease and grace nearly unbelievable, somersault across the hedge and out of sight in the meadow beyond."

      It seemed to us that the horse should have received some of the credit for the ease with which Sylvia shot across the hedge, but young Morton was much too intent upon the fate of his goddess to have eyes for anything else. When he found her lying on the ground she was unconscious, and so he told her of his love. That brought her to and she called him "You – you – stable boy." And so George decided to go to college.

      His high school preparation had been scant and irregular. He went to Princeton, and after two months' cramming passed all his examinations. Football attracted him from the first as a means to the advancement which he desired. "With surprised eyes," writes our author, "he saw estates as extravagant as Oakmont, and frequently in better taste. Little by little he picked up the names of the families that owned them. He told himself that some day he would enter those places as a guest, bowed to by such servants as he had been. It was possible, he promised himself bravely, if only he could win a Yale or a Harvard game."

      Perhaps this explains why one meets so few Princeton men socially. Some, we have found, are occasionally invited to drop in after dinner. These, we assume, are recruited from the ranks of those Princetonians who have tied Yale or Harvard or at least held the score down.

      Like Mr. Minnigerode, Mr. Camp employs symbolism in his story. In the Yale novel we had Corliss evidently standing for Coy. Just which Princeton hero George Morton represents we are not prepared to say. In fact, the only Princeton name which comes to mind at the moment is that of Big Bill Edwards who used to sit in the Customs House and throw them all for a loss. Morton can hardly be intended for Edwards because it seems unlikely that anybody would ever have engaged Big Bill to ride horses; no, not even to break them. A little further on, however, we are introduced to the Princeton coach, a certain Mr. Stringham. Here, to be sure, identification is easy. Stringham, we haven't a doubt, is Roper. We could wish Mr. Camp had been more subtle. He might, for instance, have called him Cordier.

      In some respects Morton proved an even better football player than Corliss. He did not score any greater number of touchdowns, but he had more of an air with him. Thus, in the account of the Harvard game it is recorded: "Then, with his interference blocked and tumbling, George yielded to his old habit and slipped off to one side at a hazard. The

Скачать книгу