“Oh, I told you just to leave it to Hicks!”
he declared, grinning happily. “I promised
to round up an unstoppable fullback, a Gargantuan Hercules,
and I did! Just think of what he will do to Hamilton
and Ballard in the big games! As I have often
told you, always—leave It to
Hicks!”
“ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL”
“Oh, what we’ll do to Ballard
Will surely be a shame!
We’ll push their team clear off
the field
And win the football game!”
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., one night three days after
the first big game, that with Hamilton, a week following
Thor’s great awakening in the Latham game, sat
in his cozy room, having assumed his favorite position—chair
tilted back at a perilous angle and feet thrust atop
of the radiator. The versatile youth, having
just composed a song with which to encourage Bannister
elevens in the future, was reading it aloud, when his
mind was torpedoed by a most startling thought.
“Land o’ Goshen!” reflected the
sunny-souled Senior, aghast. “I haven’t
twanged my ole banjo and held forth with a saengerfest
for a coon’s age! I surely can do so now
without arousing Butch to wrath. Thor has awakened,
Hamilton is walloped, and Bannister will surely win
the Championship! Everything is happy, an’
de goose hangs high, so here goes!”
Holding his banjo </i>a la</i> troubadour, the blithesome
Hicks, who as a Senior was harassed by no study-hours
or inspections, strode from his room and out into
the corridor, up and down which he majestically paced,
like a sentinel on his beat, twanging his beloved
banjo with abandon, and roaring in his foghorn, subterranean
voice:
“Oh, the way we walloped Hamilton
Surely was a shame!
And we’re going to win the Championship—
For we’ll do Ballard the same!
“And Bannister shall flaunt the
flag
For at least three seasons more;
Because—no team can win a game
While the Gold and Green has Thor!”
On Bannister Field, three days before, the Gold and
Green had crushed the strong team from “old
Ham” to the tune of 20 to 0; Thor’s magnificent
ground-gaining, in which he smashed through the supposedly
impregnable defense of the enemy, was a surprise to
his comrades and a shock to Hamilton. Time and
again, on the fourth down, the ball was given to Thorwald,
and the blond Colossus, with several of old Ham’s
players clinging to him, plunged ahead for big gains.
So now with a monster mass-meeting in half an hour,
the exultant Bannister youths pretended to study,
but prepared to parade on the campus, cheer the eleven
and Thor, and arouse excitement for the winning of
the biggest game, a victory over Ballard, a week later.
From the rooms of would-be studious Seniors on both
sides of the corridor, as Hicks patrolled it, came
vociferous protests and classic criticisms, gathering
in force and volume as the breezy youth’s foghorn
voice roared his song; that heedless collegian grinned
as he heard:
