IN THE LINE

PREFACE

In the Line is a story of school life and football rather than of football and school life. In its football it is meant to supplement Following the Ball, as With Mask and Mit in its baseball will supplement Making the Nine, each book emphasizing a different department of play. The story is in no sense history, and no attempt has been made to describe actual persons.

The case for football presented in Chapters XX and XXII is believed to be a fair and candid statement of facts with regard to the game as they are known to those most familiar with it. American Rugby football is here, and here to stay, not because of its æsthetic virtues, but because it appeals irresistibly to the Anglo-Saxon heart. In twenty years, against ignorant criticism and bitter opposition, it has established viiiitself in every section of the country. It has merits which can neither be argued away nor overborne by abuse; it has conspicuous faults. Eliminate “dirty football” and the playing of unfit or unfairly matched men, provide for the players proper supervision in their practice and strict officials in their matches,—and the dangers of the game, with all serious grounds of objection, will be removed.

Particular thanks for helpful suggestions as to guard play are due Mr. Joseph T. Gilman, a veteran of the Dartmouth eleven, whose mastery of the technique of his position has been proved in many a hard contest and against many a clever antagonist.

Boston, April, 1905.

CHAPTER I RAW MATERIAL

Wolcott Lindsay Senior, with Wolcott Lindsay Junior, and Wolcott Junior’s Mamma, arrived in Boston on New Year’s day, after buffeting for sixty hours against a furious northwest storm that left the great ice-coated liner looking like a glass ship taken from a globe on the nursery shelf and magnified a thousand times. Wolcott Junior, being a healthy, vigorous youth, with thousands of footpounds of energy running hourly to waste, and having the overweening confidence in his own powers which distinguishes some otherwise very attractive specimens of American boyhood, had found the restraint of the cabin extremely irksome. Had 2the voyage lasted much longer, he must have discovered some means of getting by the barriers which kept him in safe imprisonment. In that case there might have been no Wolcott Lindsay Junior, and no story of “In the Line” to be written.

“Junior,” as his mother called him, was not one to slip by a sentinel unobserved. Five feet eleven in height, unshod; one hundred seventy-five pounds in weight, unclothed; with heart and lungs unstrained by growth, and muscles already swelling in significant bunches and bands, he looked more like a college junior than a raw boy not yet eighteen, still unripe for entrance examinations.

“Ridiculous,” his father had said, lifting his eyes from their five-foot-six-inch level and measuring the whole length and breadth of his offspring,—“perfectly ridiculous to be so big! Why, if you keep on at this rate you’ll be as much out of place in an average house as a rhinoceros in a garret. And not yet even a sub-freshman!”

“Now, Wolcott!” expostulated Mrs. Lindsay, 3“you know that’s not fair. If you had told us we were going to stay in Hamburg two years instead of six months, we should have put him in a good school or had a tutor for him. It isn’t his fault if he’s behind; he hasn’t had a fair chance.”

At this the expression on the face of Lindsay père changed. “He shall have chance enough when we get home. No more conversation lessons in French and German, or reading novels for vocabulary, or going to the theatre for pronunciation, or rowing on the Elster with that learned fool, Herr Doktor Krauss; but old-fashioned Latin and Greek and mathematics in some good, stiff school, under a clear-headed American teacher. Too bad that the boy couldn’t have had a touch of the Hamburger Gymnasium!”

At this suggestion that hard things were in store for the young man, Mrs. Lindsay looked worried, and Junior assumed an air of indifference that cloaked his real feeling, which was one of joy to be coming home again to boys of his own race and kind, and of willingness to put 4up with any school or any work, however “stiff,” so long as it was American and with Americans.

Aunt Emmeline met them at the dock. Aunt Emmeline was Mr. Lindsay’s sister, like him and yet differing from him as sisters are wont to differ from brothers. Both were in a sense aristocrats; both thought much of the family name and the family history, but their points of view were widely variant. Mr. Lindsay felt strongly that the possession of ancestors who had served their generation faithfully and well, pledged the descendants to the same ratio of achievement. His constant fear was that he should fail to maintain the standard which the forefathers had set. Aunt Emmeline, on the other hand, regarded the family past as a legacy bequeathed for the glorification of the present. Gentle and charitable and good, she yet loved to think of the Lindsays as an essentially superior race, whom it behooved to keep themselves aloof from the common modern herd, and contemplate in reverence the ancient family greatness.

Both Mr. Lindsay and his sister were experts 5in the family genealogy. The brother loved to tell of the Lindsay who left a comfortable English benefice to guide a little flock in the wilderness; of the farmer who, with his two sons, ambushed a dozen Indians who attacked his house in the Pequot wars; of the young lieutenant who followed the desperate fortunes of Paul Jones, and was cut in two by a cannon-ball from the Serapis. Miss Emmeline took little interest in the pioneers and the farmers of the family tree. Her tales were of the laces and jewels of Barbara Wolcott, wife of the attorney-general; of the splendid plate lost in the mansion of the great-great-uncle in New Jersey, when pillaged by the Hessians; of the fine estate of the one Tory member of the family, whose daughter became the wife of Lord Stanley of Stanley Hall, Roebuckshire. Aunt Emmeline hoped that Wolcott would exemplify the fine manners and superior breeding of his be-ruffled ancestors; Mr. Lindsay that he might show some traces of the good sense, courage, and sterling worth of the builders and defenders of

the colony. And in this hulking, overgrown 6fellow, no longer a boy and not yet a man, both felt some disappointment.

A few days were required to get the family used to solid earth again, and for picking up the threads of existence severed two years before. Meantime Mr. Lindsay made inquiries for a school for his son. He himself believed in the public schools, not as some of his neighbors, in theory and for other people’s children, but in theory and for his own. Mr. Lindsay had ever the courage of his convictions. So strong was this faith that Mrs. Lindsay, who favored a private school, and Aunt Emmeline, who adored St. Susan’s, had each abandoned her own pet scheme for “little Wolcott,” in the conviction that the public school was inevitable. When, therefore, the head of the family returned one day with the news that Junior, on account of the irregularity of his previous training, and the inflexible system which the public schools maintained, could not prepare at the Latin School without great loss of time, the discussion of schools over Junior’s head, or rather under his nose, became serious. With the public 7school out of the field, each lady thought to

see her own choice adopted. Miss Emmeline’s arguments, boiled down, were that Dr. Cummin, at the head of St. Susan’s, was “such a good man” and some very nice boys went there,—boys, that is, of approved mothers and grandfathers,—and they certainly came back with lovely manners. Mrs. Lindsay urged that the private school offered good instruction, the companionship of boys of the neighborhood, and what was to her of much more account, the opportunity to keep the fledgling a little longer at home. Mr. Lindsay listened, questioned, and like a wise man took time to consider and talk with his friends.

And here was the undoing of both the fond mamma and the solicitous aunt. Mr. Lindsay met Friend Number One at his club at luncheon.

“Do you know anything about schools?” asked the father. “I am looking for the best place in which to put my son. I hear that St. Susan’s is very highly recommended.”

Number One looked at him a moment in thoughtful silence. “Do you? Yes, I suppose some people must recommend it.”

8“I infer that you do not. What do you know against it?”

“I know this,” replied the man, energetically; “my nephew entered Harvard last fall from St. Susan’s with a reputation for piety and goodness that any saint might have envied. In three months that fellow had gone to pieces in the temptations of the unaccustomed life like a rotten ship dashed by a hurricane against a reef. He was about as well fitted for the freedom the college offers as I am for the prize ring. Why don’t you put your boy into a good private school right here in the city?”

A little later Mr. Lindsay fell in with Friend Number Two. “Do you know anything about private schools in Boston?”

“Private schools? Yes, there are two or three good ones here,—a little snobbish, of course, but good schools none the less. Ask Tom Smith about them. He’s got two boys in one of them.”

But Mr. Lindsay had no intention of consulting Tom Smith. Snobbishness was his pet aversion; the very mention of the possibility 9aroused a vehement prejudice. Without stopping to inquire whether the charge were true or false, he abandoned all thought of a private school for the lordly Wolcott Junior, and drifted on to Friend Number Three with mind swept clear of all prepossessions.

Friend Number Three had positive convictions. He was an enthusiastic partisan of the rah-rah sort, alive to the merits and blind to the faults of the school of his boyhood. He knew exactly the place for Wolcott Junior, democratic, cosmopolitan, of high standard of scholarship, with a system of government tending to develop moral independence, and boasting a history rich in names of men of action and service. It happened that the merits which the loyal alumnus ascribed to Seaton were precisely those which Mr. Lindsay thought it most important that a school should possess. It happened also that the next two men consulted gave opinions which either negatively or positively supported Number Three. As a result and despite the preferences of the ladies of the family, Wolcott’s school future was determined. Within a 10week after his arrival in Boston he was packing his trunk for Seaton.

It need hardly be said that this method of selecting a school, while unquestionably typical, would not always lead to the same result. Friend Number Four, for example, might have contradicted Number Three and Number One, and by lauding St. Susan’s to the skies, have sent the son of the house to the school of Aunt Emmeline’s choice. Or, if the case had been thoroughly investigated, the private school might easily have won the favorable decision. As it was, Mr. Lindsay, in considering the boy and his needs as well as his own ideals, proceeded rather more rationally than the average parent. Many a boy is placed in a particular school merely on the strength of a specious advertisement. Some are ejected from home rather than sent to school, the destination being of much less consequence to the selfish parents than their own relief from responsibility. Others again, through unwholesome dread of evil influences, are turned over to a family of under-masters who wait on them and think for them 11and keep them in prolonged infancy. But these are extremes of neglect or solicitude. In the

end the school is but the opportunity, the vital force is the boy. If the boy is wrong, no school can make him right. Given the right boy in the hands of competent, conscientious men, and the form of the school makes little difference. So thought Mr. Lindsay as he said good-by to his strapping son at Seaton station; and he boarded the train with a clear conscience.

CHAPTER II ACQUAINTANCES

Lindsay was registered as a middler. Being weak in Latin and Greek, and strong in French and German, he found himself spread over three classes, pushed ahead in modern languages, and degraded among the juniors in classics. To this mixture of classes and associates he resigned himself the more readily, as he honestly purposed to do what the school authorities advised, maintain his position in the middle and senior subjects and work his way up out of the junior class. But the experience of the first few days did not strengthen his confidence. To hear these young boys rattle off declensions and principal parts, run through synopses as he might run through the alphabet, give glib translations of passages through which he must toil 13his slow and painful way; to see how with every question on ablative or subjunctive, the air quivered with the hands of those eager to answer—all this, with the distractions of strange boys and their stranger acts added to the bewilderment of unfamiliar surroundings, plunged him in despair.

In the junior class were the Peck twins, Duncan and Donald. If ever two lads started in life with an exactly equal chance, it was this light-haired, snub-nosed, solemn-eyed pair. Externally as much alike as bullets cast in the same mould, they wore clothes of the same material and cut, bought neckties and hats by pairs, and from the spirit of fun which twinship seems to develop even in the sedatest couple, habitually appeared in the same dress at the same time. In actions, too, they were a unit; they attended the same recitations, held the same views, trained with the same set, and, in general, shared each other’s joys and sorrows and stood by each other in time of trouble in a manner most unusual to brothers.

Unfortunately, however, alike as were their 14appearance and interests, nature had endowed them with very different mental characteristics. Donald was an excellent scholar, in fact almost bookish, easily ranking among the best. Duncan on the contrary, who inclined decidedly to heaviness, bumped along at the bottom of the class, carried by the general momentum. If he ever was ready with an answer in the class room, the chances were that he knew as much about it as the receiver of a telephone knows about the message which passes through it. A prompt and correct answer in Duncan’s mouth was suspicious; it usually came from Donald, or some other sympathetic friend who understood the art of conveying information undetected, and who shared the delusion that in this way he was performing a neighborly service. Among boys who really knew the twins, the heavy Duncan with his slow, droll ways and never failing good nature was unquestionably the favorite. As a rule, however, since the majority could not distinguish them when they were together, and only their most intimate

friends could identify them singly, the qualities 15of the brothers were lumped together in a composite, and credited to “the Pecks.” That this represented the just point of view, the conduct of the pair clearly showed, for each was a loyal admirer of the other, and inevitably shared in the other’s glory or disgrace.

The system of mutual coöperation which the twins regularly followed was responsible for Lindsay’s first failure in recitation. It occurred in junior Greek. The Pecks sat side by side as subdued as sleeping kittens, while Mr. Warner passed along the row with his questions. Donald responded promptly and correctly. The instructor beamed with satisfaction over the success of his method of instruction; the answers were flawless. Then Tom Riley—Wolcott did not know him at that time—had doubts about a contraction, and persisted in his doubts until Mr. Warner was forced to leave his chair and chalk the forms in plain view upon the board. The moment the instructor’s back was turned, the twins quietly shifted places, and waited in complacent patience until Riley was satisfied, when a second flawless recitation 16was credited to the Peck family. And while Wolcott was staring and trying to make out what was happening and which boy was reciting, the questions had passed from the twins’ row to his own, and he suddenly heard his own name called, felt the blood rush to his

face as he strove to find the place and fix his fluttering attention. There was a moment of terrible silence, while the lines of type blurred themselves over the section marks, and the page seemed to swell and decrease like a landscape behind a moving lens; then the impatient hands began again their furious waving, another boy gave the answer which was hovering on Wolcott’s lips, and the fire of questions swept on to another row. It was certainly the fault of the twins.

In the middle class Lindsay sat between Laughlin and Marchmont, two neighbors as opposite as north and south, while just beyond was Poole. Laughlin was captain of the Eleven for the next year, a big, broad-shouldered, heavy-featured fellow of twenty-one, with a face on which rested the glow of rare physical health, 17and massive hands in which any book but the biggest lexicon seemed out of place. His clothes, though neither of fine quality nor of good fit, were well brushed and clean, and the broad thumb which lay at the folding of the book, covering completely the double margin, if roughened and hardened by exposure and labor, still gave evidence of the personal neatness of its owner. David Laughlin had not a quick mind,—that one could read in the expression of his face, in which honesty and determination were more apparent than alertness. But he learned his lessons as thoroughly as he knew how, gave his whole attention to the class-room work, and as a result ranked above many who were by nature cleverer.

Marchmont, Lindsay’s other neighbor, has been called the opposite of Laughlin. He was tall and slim, possessed delicate, intelligent features and white, shapely hands; wore clothes of fine material which in smoothness of fit and moderation of style showed the skilled hand of the city tailor; took a negligent interest in the recitation, and answered questions addressed 18to him with sufficient readiness to satisfy the instructor without displaying an unseemly eagerness for learning.

At the first glance Wolcott made up his mind that he should like Marchmont and dislike Laughlin. The impression which the latter conveyed, of roughness and brute force and determination to make his way in spite of early disadvantages, was repellent to the young man fresh from a European city where distinctions of class and wealth are everywhere magnified. Marchmont, on the other hand, had the appearance and manners of one familiar with the usages of good society.

Lindsay passed out of his first recitation with the middlers feeling much alone among the jostling crowd of chattering boys. Many glanced at him with curiosity, taking quick measure of the newcomer, but few wasted words upon him; an unknown boy stands at zero in the Seaton world. Laughlin brushed against him, nodded, said “Hello!” and asked if he had ever played foot-ball. When Lindsay modestly answered “a little,” Laughlin gave a sharp 19look at his shoulders and arms, and turned, apparently indifferent, to talk with another boy. Poole, a quiet, dignified lad, whose importance in the school world one could guess from the eagerness with which others addressed him, seemed disposed to be polite to the newcomer, gave him his hand and the information that he was “in the best class in school.” Marchmont joined him in the corridor and accompanied him to the entrance of Hale, where Wolcott had slipped into a room recently vacated. Yes, Marchmont was decidedly the most attractive fellow he had seen.