He is matched to walk twenty-four miles to-day for an enormous purse. He holds world records for pedestrianism. He will wear one of our custom-made London suitings, unexcelled for natty outdoor wear and stylish appearance. They are all the rage in England, and therefore sure to be popular here.
He will also distribute, gratis, tops and marbles to the boys and chewing-gum to the ladies. Watch for him, everybody; he will be here soon, and will follow this road.
COME OUT, GIRLS! COME OUT, BOYS!
NOW IS YOUR CHANCE.
WAIT, WATCH FOR THE WINGED WONDER OF WESTCHESTER!
The glimmer dawned to a great light. He jumped down and hurried along the remaining mile or two as fast as his weary legs would go. There was no crowd awaiting him on the out-skirts of Framingham, and for a few minutes he hoped that he was going to at least finish in peace. Vain hope! As he approached the public square he saw it crowded with people and heard the strains of a bra.s.s band. On turning the corner he was received with a great shout. Then he saw a sight that explained it all, and caused him to exclaim, "The three-year-old idiots!"
In front of the town-hall was drawn up a barge with four plumed horses.
In it were a band of music and a full delegation of Steve"s devoted friends. Ned Burleigh was up on the box haranguing the populace.
"What sort of a fool circus are you children trying to make of yourselves," asked Hudson, as he came up.
"A grand one, old man, and you have been the elephant, the shining star of the whole show," replied Burleigh. "You will find beer in the ambulance."
"You have won the money handsomely, Steve," acknowledged Stoughton, "and we all accept with pleasure your kind invitation to dinner."
A RAMBLING DISCUSSION AND AN ADVENTURE, PERHAPS UNCONNECTED.
d.i.c.k Stoughton came to lunch that day in a decidedly bad humor, cause unknown. He was late, and all the other members of the club table were there, including the two dogs. A "Gray baiting" was going on. This sport consisted in working up the poetic feelings of Ernest Gray, and then ruthlessly harrowing the same. Gray was a fiery, imaginative little man, whose soul compa.s.sed far more than his body. His impulsive nature drove him constantly into the net spread by his friends, but he had become used to the process, and perhaps it did him good. Whether or not he had in him the stuff for a true poet, he was at least in no danger among those men of becoming a false one. He was just then stirred to a fine condition on the subject of Philistinism, was violently supporting the famous professor of the Humanities, and had almost got to the point of quoting poetry.
"It makes me laugh a low, sad laugh," remarked Stoughton, gloomily b.u.t.tering a m.u.f.fin, "when I think what Gray will be doing thirty years from now."
"We have arranged all that," said Burleigh. "Ernest is going to marry a strong-minded woman four times as big as himself, who will take him out shopping and make him carry the bundles and the twins."
"No, it will be a greater change than that," continued d.i.c.k. "At fifty he will probably be a keen, representative business man. He will be celebrated for being better able than any one in Wall Street to cheat his neighbor, and he will be absorbed in the occupation. He will be a man of strength and stamen, a man of industry, a plain, hard-working man. He will publish Letters of a Parent, in bad English, about the degeneracy of education at Harvard, and will refuse to send his sons here for fear of their becoming dudes and loafers. He won"t spoil good paper then with odes and fantasies; he will devote it, instead, to watering stock and foreclosing mortgages. Just see if he doesn"t."
"Are you narrow enough to think," asked Gray, defiantly, "that a man cannot work in this world, and work hard, without shutting his mind to everything outside of his tool shop?"
"Perhaps he can," answered Stoughton, "but he never does in this country; he hasn"t time. Whatever we take up, we have got to keep at fever heat or else go to the wall. It will be work, work, work until we become utterly uninteresting machines. It can"t be helped, we have got to make up our minds to it some day and we had better do so now. We are all wasting four valuable years in this anomalous spot of Cambridge, when we ought to be learning bookkeeping. We are a nation of one-sided workers, and we might just as well accept the situation philosophically.
I am sure I for one don"t care a cent. Only I wish I had not fooled away my time so long, with a set of men made up of dilettantes and b.u.mmers."
d.i.c.k emphasized the concluding word by handsomely scooping the last sausage just ahead of Jack Randolph, who with a bow and wave of his hand gracefully acknowledged the defeat. It was a strict rule of etiquette at the club table to take the odd trick of any dish, whether you wanted it or not.
"h.e.l.lo," exclaimed Burleigh, with a happy light in his face, "d.i.c.k has waked up to the seriousness of life again. That is the third time this month." Stoughton"s occasional pessimism was as fair game to his friends, as Gray"s poetry, so the victim for that day"s lunch was promptly changed.
"So he has," added Hudson. "He has a good, old-fashioned attack of remorse. Where were you last night, d.i.c.k? Must have been an awful spree."
"Is it a letter from your governor?" queried Rattleton, sympathetically.
"Perhaps it is the letter on your forensic," suggested Randolph. "Jack Rat got an E. on his, but just see how sweetly _he_ takes it."
"A little serious reflection is undoubtedly a good thing for you, my son," observed Hollis Holworthy. "But though I don"t want to flatter you, excuse my saying that you talk like an a.s.s. Even if your premises were true your conclusion is false. If we Americans are all such narrow-minded money-makers, that is all the more reason for trying to be something better. But it isn"t so. I don"t believe work has necessarily any such effect. Gray is right."
"My conclusion is all right. The difference between us is that I am perfectly contented to be as the rest of my countrymen are; you want to be something different, _ergo_, you are a sn.o.b. Furthermore my premises _are_ true, and you will find them so, my poor children. I am a few years in advance of you, that"s all. Just see how men change after they leave college. Go over to the Law School and look at those grinds, each one working night and day to get ahead of the rest. I met old Dane Austin the other day crossing the Yard, three huge books under each arm, and a pair of spectacles across his nose. He used to be the best built man in the "Varsity boat, but he doesn"t touch an oar now, and won"t try for the crew, unless they absolutely need him at the last minute. He is getting red-eyed and pale, and looks almost hollow-chested. A man can"t keep up with the law and pay any attention to his physique. He is losing all his strength and good looks."
"You had better hit him once and find out," suggested Holworthy.
"Thanks; I don"t care to put my theories to quite such a test,"
acknowledged d.i.c.k, with a grin. "But it is true just the same. It is true of every other occupation. Go down to New York and stand on Wall Street. You will see a dozen men you knew, at least by sight, in college, men who used to be well-dressed and well-bred. Down there they rush by you with a nod, in all sorts of costumes,--dirty, slovenly, nervous. Sometimes they will stop for a moment to shake hands, and make some impertinent remark on your clothes. I don"t mind the prospect myself, but I am only laying it fairly before you blissful, careless, conceited youths."
"I rather think you will find that those fellows haven"t forgotten how to turn themselves out properly when there is any need for it," said Holworthy. "You don"t wear your town togs to recitations here."
"There is no doubt about it, this work and worry does spoil a man"s looks," said Burleigh. "Just look at that poor wreck over there,"
pointing to Rattleton.
That student had finished his lunch (or breakfast) and stretched his legs as usual in the next chair. He was engaged in throwing crackers for his dog Blathers to catch, and was rather out of the conversation. He caught the last remark only.
"You have no idea what a handsome man I"d be if I didn"t work so hard,"
he replied.
"It is all right for you, Jack," Stoughton went on. "A watchful Providence has sent you an income. It is almost a pity, though, for you would make a fascinating tramp. No amount of either starvation or public opinion would ever make you change your calm, philosophical life. But the rest of us must all get into the procession and keep up with the brazen band. No wonder so many of our girls marry Englishmen. They are dead right, too; they don"t want to marry worn-out machines, they prefer men."
"Hurray!" shouted Hudson. "The secret is out. Some Englishman has cut him out with his best girl."
"I am not handicapped with any such nonsense, thank Heaven," growled d.i.c.k. "But if I was, by Jove, I wouldn"t be fool enough to do any work for her sake, as so many misguided men do. No, sir, I"d take life easily and keep my figure, as our trans-Atlantic cousins do. I"d spend my days with the daughter and live on the old man. That is what girls like, and they do have some sense."
"That is perfect rot," exclaimed the poetic Gray, expressing his roused sentiment with more force than grace. "Life to-day is just what it was in the days of chivalry. A true knight must prove his love with his lance, and win his wife like a man."
"There you go, of course," answered Stoughton; "clap your leg over Pegasus, and off across country, regardless of hedges and ditches, or the narrow roads of commerce. Suppose his lance got busted, as was frequently the case?"
"Sic "im, sic "im," chuckled Burleigh. "We have got the poet and the cynic by the ears. Oh, this is lovely!"
"Both of "em amateurs," added Holworthy, "and neither knowing what he is talking about."
"Two to one on the poet, though," said Randolph. "He is always in earnest, anyway."
"Shake hands, gents," said Rattleton, getting interested. "Time."
"Now just listen to me," said d.i.c.k, tilting back his chair and waving his fork pedantically. "I"ll give you a really accurate picture of your dear days of chivalry, such as you never got out of a romance."
"Silence for Sir Walter Stoughton"s account of a tourney," commanded Burleigh. "Steve Hudson, pull that pup of yours off the table; she"ll upset the milk pitcher."
"I have just been reading all about that sort of game," interrupted Rattleton. "Seems to me they were a most unsporting lot. They had no cla.s.ses or handicaps; just lumped "em all in together, feather-weights and heavy-weights. No idea of a fair thing."
"Shut up your childish prattle, Jack," commanded Burleigh. "If you will push your researches far enough you will find that the little fellows always won. The giants invariably got the heads smote off "em. We are not on the brutal subject of prize-fighting, we are on chivalry. You know nothing about that, so keep quiet and let d.i.c.k go on."
"I suppose you have an idea," Stoughton went on, "that every interesting young gentleman who entered the lists was a sure winner, and then all he had to do was to crown the heroine as Queen of Love and Beauty and live happily ever afterwards. Now of course that wasn"t so. Some one had to get thrashed, and most young knights probably occupied that position for the first ten years or so of their career. Take an individual case; Sir Ernest Gray, bent on winning glory for Dulcinea, looks over the sporting calendar and enters himself for every big field-meeting during the season. He bears himself right bravely in them all, but gets stood on his head with great regularity; in fact Dulcinea gets a little tired of watching his performance. Nevertheless she goes to the crack meeting of Ashby de la Zouche, to see Gray try again.
"This tourney is carried off with great ease by an old hand, Sir Thomas de Mainfort, who, having been separated from his third wife on the ground of brutal treatment, is not doing any love-proving with his lance. He is simply a mug hunter; he is in for the white Barbary steed, and the other fellows" armor."