Bost was there with his head down between his knees and he said he didn't care--Rearick or Sillcocks or his satanic majesty could pick the team. As for himself, he was going to leave college and go to herding hens somewhere over two thousand miles from the Faculty. So we left it to Rearick and went home to sleep and dream murderous dreams about meeting profs in lonesome places. The first thing I saw next morning when I went out of the house was a handbill on a telegraph pole. It was printed in red ink. It implored every Siwash student to turn out to the game that afternoon. "New team--new rules--new results!" it read. "The celebrated Sillcocks system of football will be played by the Siwash team. Attendance at this game counts five chapel cuts after Thanksgiving. Admission free. Tea will be served. You are requested to be present." Were we present? We were--every one of us that wasn't tied down to a bed. There was something promising in that announcement. Besides, the greenest of us were taken in by that chapel-cut business. Besides, it was free! College students are just like the rest of the world. They'd go to their great-grandmother's funeral if the admission was free. Our gang put on big crêpe bows, just to be doing something, and marched into the stadium that afternoon with hats off. It was packed. Talk about promotion work. Rearick had pasted up bills until all Jonesville was red in the face. And the Faculty was there, too. Every member was present. They sat in a big special box and Sillcocks had the seat of honor. He looked as pleased as though he had just reformed a cannibal tribe. I suppose the programs did it. They announced once more that the celebrated Sillcocks system of football as worked out by the coach and Mr. Keg Rearick would be played in this game by the Siwash team. The whole town was there too, congested with curiosity. In one big bunch sat all the Siwash men who had ever played football, in their best clothes and with their best girls. They were the guests of honor at their own funeral. The Kiowa team came trotting out--behemoths, all of them--ready to get revenge for three painful years. They had heard all about the massacre and regarded it as the joke of the century on Siwash. They also regarded it as their providential duty to emphasize the joke--to sharpen up the point by scoring about a hundred and ten points on the scared young greenhorns who would have to play for us. All our ex-players stood up and gave them a big cheer when they came. So did everybody else. It's always a matter of policy to grin and joke while you're being dissected. Nothing like cheerfulness. Cheerfulness saved many a martyr from worry while he was being eaten by a lion.