"Bless your heart, no! Put it in the waste-basket. It doesn't make a
kopeck's worth of difference. Here's a thought, though. Do you approve
of the tactics of those _Chronicle_ fellows in the matter?"
"No, I do not."
"Well, why not show them up to-morrow?"
"I'll be glad to do it."
So Queed wrote a stinging little article of a couple of sticks' length,
holding up to public scorn journalistic redshirts who curry-combed the
masses, and preached class hatred for the money there was in it. It is
doubtful if this article helped matters much. For the shameless
_Chronicle_ seized on it as showing that the _Post_ had tried to defend
the president, and utterly failed. "Even the West organ," so ran its
brazen capitals, "does not dare endorse its darling. And no wonder,
after the storm of indignation aroused by the _Chronicle's_ fearless
exposures."
West kept his good humor and self-control intact, but it was hardly to
be expected that he enjoyed venomous misrepresentation of this sort. The
solidest comfort he got in these days came from Sharlee Weyland, who did
not read the _Chronicle_, and was most beautifully confident that
whatever he had done was right. But after all, the counselings of Miss
Avery, of whom he also saw much that spring, better suited his
disgruntled humor.
"They are incapable of appreciating you," said she, a siren in the red
motor. "You owe it to yourself to enter a larger field. And"--so ran the
languorous voice--"to your friends."
The trustees met on Saturday, with the _Chronicle_ still pounding away
with deadly regularity. Its editorial of the afternoon before was
entitled, "We Want A College President--Not A Class President," and had
frankly urged the trustees of old Blaines to consider whether a change
of administration was not advisable. This was advice which some of the
trustees were only too ready to follow. James E. Winter, coming armed
cap-à-pie to the meeting, suggested that Mr. West withdraw for a time,
which Mr. West properly declined to do. The implacable insurgent
thereupon launched into a bitter face-to-face denunciation of the
president's conduct in the hazing affair, outpacing the _Chronicle_ by
intimating, too plainly for courtesy, that the president's conduct
toward Jones was characterized by duplicity, if not wanting in
consistent adherence to veracity. "I had a hard time to keep from
hitting him," said West afterwards, "but I knew that would be the worst
thing I could possibly do." "Maybe so," sighed Mr. Fyne, apparently not
with full conviction. Winter went too far in moving that the president's
continuance in office was prejudicial to the welfare of Blaines College,
and was defeated 9 to 3. Nevertheless, West always looked back at this
meeting as one of the most unpleasant incidents in his life. He flung
out of it humiliated, angry, and thoroughly sick at heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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