Ann Arbor (Mich.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American
At six o'clock that night the story was "on the A. P. wire," and being
ticked off in every newspaper telegraph room from Portland to Portland,
for the night manager at Chicago had called it "bully good stuff."
And when it came clicking into those offices to which little Green had
wired shortly after noon, the desk men in charge recognized the
incompleteness of the "A. P. story," and forthwith telegraphed their
unknown correspondent for more. Regular correspondents were totally
disregarded. Little Green was supreme; and no one realized that
supremacy more keenly than little Green himself. He was the king of the
night with his story; and sheet after sheet he filled with his jagged,
irregular chirography, and the dreamy operator kept up with him.
But there came an end to his work at last, as there comes an end to all
things; and when the end came in this particular case, little Green
whistled, slipped his pencil into his pocket and sauntered out of the
telegraph box jauntily. He did not recall until he reached the office of
the _'Varsity News_ that he had not eaten since morning. He glanced at
his watch. He would write the "story" for his own paper now--and
then--Supper.
All of which may explain to the reader of this veracious tale why it was
that the president of the University, as he glanced over his _Providence
Journal_ in Providence the next morning, suddenly started in his chair,
and calling for a telegraph blank sent this message to the dean of the
Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts:
"Take no action in Catherwood case. Sift it. Leave for Ann Arbor at
once."
And likewise it may account for the sudden exclamation of the dean
himself, as at breakfast, earlier that same morning in Ann Arbor, his
eye chanced to fall upon a column-and-one-half story with a two column
display head, that blazed forth to all the world many details unknown to
him in the case of Frederick Edward Catherwood.
He had attended the faculty meeting the night before, when the case was
threshed out to the finest grain, and he had heard no such explanation
of the affair as stared at him now in cold black type from the front
page of his morning paper.
A _secret_ secret society in the University, the function of which was
to haze every one big or little who for one reason or another, might
fall under its bann! He had never heard of any such organization. And
yet--and yet----
Oh, little Green! Oh, little Green! Little did you dream to what ill end
your rare invention, your insane imaginings, would result!
For, after partaking that night of a luncheon and dinner rolled into one
big steak in "Tuts," little Green sought his room where he slept the
sleep of vigorous youth till a beam of the winter sun, shining through
his alcove window, fell athwart his eyes and wakened him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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