College stories; Sports stories; Yale University -- Juvenile fiction
Of course, the story got out, and the two participants never heard
the last of it. It was even resurrected in the class day histories at
the end of Senior year.
CHAPTER XVIII.
FOOTBALL IN JUNIOR YEAR.
After college closed Frank Armstrong and Jimmy Turner joined a party
of engineers and their assistants, whose work it was to survey a new
railroad through the heart of New Brunswick, one of the Maritime
provinces of Canada, and for two months they enjoyed the life of
veritable savages in the open air. Following the pointing finger
of the compass they burrowed through the tangled forests, sleeping
sometimes rolled in blankets with a bunch of fragrant hemlock
boughs for a pillow, and, only when the weather was bad, under the
protecting service tents, several of which had been brought along
for bad weather. Many nights, however, the tents were never set up
at all, and the whole party of young men slept with only the stars
for their roof. Frank made himself invaluable at river crossings,
of which there were many, for bridges were few and far between. It
was his duty to swim the barring river with the engineers' "chains"
which he did with such success that he was nicknamed "the torpedo."
Later he was followed by other members of the party on homemade
catamarans.
The life agreed with both the boys, and when the party finished
its work and took train at the little station of Harcourt on the
Intercolonial railroad, with clothing ragged from the rough caress of
the tangled woods and shoes guiltless of blacking, they might well
have been mistaken for young lumbermen instead of college students.
Ten days later they were in football clothes on Yale field, obeying
the call for early fall practice before college opened. Frank had
put on ten pounds during the summer, and for the first time felt
himself strong enough to withstand the punishing work of the game. He
was hard as nails, in perfect condition and eager for any work the
coach might set him at. Again he was placed at end in practice by
Coach Hanley, and made such good progress that in the middle of the
first game he was called in to play the position, where he acquitted
himself with such credit that he earned a word of praise from Captain
Baldwin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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