FORTY YEARS OF IT BY RALPH HENRY BARBOUR. Benton’s Venture. Around the End. The Junior Trophy. Change Signals! For Yardley. Finkler’s Field. Winning His “Y.” The New Boy at Hilltop. Double Play. Forward Pass! The Spirit of the School. Four in Camp. Four Afoot. Four Afloat. The Arrival of Jimpson. Behind the Line. Captain of the Crew. For the Honor of the School. The Half-Back. On Your Mark. Weatherby’s Inning. D. APPLETON & COMPANY, NEW YORK. FORTY YEARS OF IT BY BRAND WHITLOCK [Illustration] NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY MCMXIV COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Copyright, 1913, by THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANY Printed in the United States of America TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER ELIAS D. WHITLOCK WHO DIED DECEMBER 23, 1913 A MINISTER OF THE SANCTUARY, AND OF THE TRUE TABERNACLE, WHICH THE LORD PITCHED, AND NOT MAN INTRODUCTION The history of democracy’s progress in a mid-Western city--so, to introduce this book in specific terms, one perhaps inevitably must call it. Yet in using the word _democracy_, one must plead for a distinction, or, better, a reversion, indicated by the curious anchylosis that, at a certain point in their maturity, usually sets in upon words newly put in use to express some august and large spiritual reality. We all know how this materializing tendency, if one may call it that, has affected our notion and our use of the commonest religious terms like _faith_, _grace_, _salvation_, for instance. Their connotation, originally fluid, spiritual and subjective, has become concrete, limited, partial, ignoble. So, too, in our common speech, even above the catchpenny vocabulary of the demagogue or politician, the word _democracy_ has taken on the limited, partial and ignoble connotation of more or less incidental and provisional forms of democracy’s practical outcome; or even of by-products not directly traceable to the action of democracy itself. How often, for example, do we see direct primaries, the single tax, the initiative and referendum posed in a kind of sacramental relation to “fundamental democracy”; or the “essential movement of democracy” measured, say, by the increased returns on the Socialist ticket at some local election!