Still, Siwash got along very well even after the police force was
organized. You see, after a town has had a college in its middle for
about fifty years, pretty much everybody in town has attended it at one
time or another. None of the police had diplomas, but it was no uncommon
thing to see an ex-member of a college debating society delivering
groceries, or an ex-president of his class getting up in an engine cab
to take the flyer into the city. For years every police magistrate was
an old Siwash man, and, though plenty of the boys would get arrested,
there were never any thirty-day complications or anything of the sort.
Two classes would meet on the main street and muss each other up. The
police would arrest nine or ten of the ringleaders. The next morning the
prisoners would appear before Squire Jennings, who climbed up on the old
college building with his class flag in '54 and kept a rival class away
by tearing down the chimney and throwing the bricks at them. Naturally,
nothing very deadly happened. The good old fellow would lecture the
crowd and let them off with a stern warning. Maybe two or three Seniors
would come home late at night from their frat hall and take a wooden
Indian cigar sign along with them just for company. One of those Indians
is such a steady sort of a chap to have along late at night. Of course,
they would be arrested by old Hank Anderson on the courthouse beat, but
it wasn't anything serious. They would telephone Frank Hinckley, who was
editor of the city daily, and just convalescing from four years of
college life himself, and he would come down and bail them out, and
Squire Jennings would kick them out of court next morning. Frank was the
patron saint of the students for years when it came to bail. He used to
say he had all the fun of being a doctor and getting called out nights
without having to try to collect any fees. Frank was no Croesus those
days and I've seen him go bail for fifteen students at one hundred
dollars apiece, when his total assets amounted to a dress suit, three
hundred and forty-five photographs and his next week's salary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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