They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second ComingSinclair, Upton
General
They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second Coming
Sinclair, Upton
Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Fiction; Jesus Christ -- Fiction
“Rickety zim, rickety zam,
Brickety, stickety, slickety slam!
Wallybaloo! Billybazoo!
We are the boys for a hullabaloo--Western City!”
It sounded all the more deafening, because Bertie, in the front
seat, had joined in.
“Hello!” said I. “We must have won the ball-game!”
“You _bet_ we did!” said Bertie, in his voice of bursting
self-importance.
“Ball-game?” asked Carpenter.
“Foot-ball,” said I. “Western City played Union Tech today. Wonder
what the score was.”
The cheer leader seemed to take the words out of my mouth. Again the
hundred voices roared:
“What was the score?
Seventeen to four!
Who got it in the neck?
Union Tech!
Who took the kitty?
Western City!”
Then more waving of flags, and yells for our prize captain and our
agile quarter-back: “Rah, rah, rah, Jerry Wilson! Rah, rah, rah,
Harriman! Western City, Western City, Western City!
W-E-S-T-E-R-N-C-I-T-Y! Western City!”
You have heard college yells, no doubt, and can imagine the tempo of
these cries, the cumulative rush of the spelled out letters, the
booming roar at the end. The voice of Bertie beat back from the
wind-shield with devastating effect upon our ears; and then our car
rolled on, and the clamor died away, and I answered the questions of
Carpenter. “They are college boys. They have won a game with another
college, and are celebrating the victory.”
“But,” said the other, “how do they manage to shout all together
that way?”
“Oh, they've practiced that, of course.”
“You mean--they gather and practice making those noises?”
“Surely.”
“They make them in cold blood?”
I laughed. “Well, the blood of youth is seldom entirely cold. They
imagine the victory while they rehearse, no doubt.”
When Carpenter spoke again, it was half to himself. “You make your
children into mobs! You train them for it!”
“It really isn't that bad,” I replied. “It's all in good
temper--it's their play.”
“Yes, yes! But what is play but practice for reality? And how shall
love be learned in savage war-dances?”
They tell us that we have a new generation of young people since the
war; a generation which thinks for itself, and has its own way. I
was an advocate of this idea in the abstract, but I must admit that
I was startled by the concrete case which I now encountered. Bertie
suddenly looked round from his place in the driver's seat. “Say,” he
demanded, in a grating voice, “where was that guy raised?”
“Bertie _dear_!” cried his mother. “Don't be rude!”
“I'm not being rude,” replied the other. “I just want to know where
he got his nut ideas.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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