On Your Mark! A Story of College Life and AthleticsBarbour, Ralph Henry
General
On Your Mark! A Story of College Life and Athletics
Barbour, Ralph Henry
College sports -- Juvenile fiction; College students -- Juvenile fiction
But Monday morning came and brought recitations and lectures, just as
though there was no such thing as football, and the college settled
back into the usual routine. At noon the sting of defeat was forgotten.
At night, fellows were cheerfully discussing the chances for the next
year. If we take defeat too hard, at least we recover quickly; there is
hope for us in that.
Allan, for all that he was quite as patriotic as any, felt the defeat
of the varsity team less than he did the cessation of track work. The
latter left him at first feeling like a fish out of water. Tommy Sweet
suggested that he might rig up a treadmill in his room and run to his
heart’s content, like a squirrel in a wire cage. But Tommy wouldn’t
promise to feed him all the peanuts he could eat, and so Allan refused
to try the scheme. Instead, he spent much of his time out-of-doors and
took long walks and runs out along the river or struck off westward to
Millport.
On many of these excursions he was accompanied by Peter Burley.
Peter--or more properly Pete, since that was the name he declared to
be the proper one--Pete couldn’t be persuaded to do any running, but
he was willing to walk any distance and in any direction, seeming to
care very little whether he ever got back to Centerport or didn’t. And
as his long legs took him over the ground about as fast as Allan could
jog, the latter never suffered for want of exercise while in Pete’s
company.
The friendship between the two had grown rapidly, until now Pete’s
prophecy that they were to be “partners” had come true. The more
Allan saw of the older boy the more he found to like, but just what
the qualities were which drew him to Pete he would have found it hard
to tell. The latter’s never-failing good-nature was undoubtedly one
of them, but that alone was not accountable. Perhaps Pete would have
experienced quite as much difficulty had he been called upon to say why
he had been attracted by Allan the first time he had seen him, or why
he had perseveringly sought his friendship ever since. The two were
radically dissimilar, but even that isn’t sufficient to explain why
each was attracted toward the other. Come to think of it, however, I
don’t believe either Allan or Pete troubled himself about the problem,
and so why should we?
Pete’s sudden leap into fame consequent upon his work against Robinson
in the freshman game had left him unaffected. He had become a college
hero in an hour, but none could see that it ever made any difference
to him. He brushed congratulation aside good-naturedly and ridiculed
praise.
“Stop your fool talk!” he would say. “I didn’t rope any steers. It was
that little jack-rabbit, Poor, that whooped things up and won the
game. I didn’t do a thing but shove ’em round some.” And when it was
hinted that the shoving around was what brought victory, “Get out!” he
would growl. “Science is what does the business, and I don’t know the
first thing about the game.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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