Those Times and TheseCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
Those Times and These
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
As this conviction sank home, the exultant yelling mounted higher and
higher still. I think it was along here the members of the band quit
trying to be heard and stopped their playing, and took their horns down
from their faces.
Immediately after this still another strange figure attained a
conspicuous place in the parade: A little darky, mad with joy, and
wearing a red-and-gray sweater much too roomy for him, came bounding
across the field, with an empty water bucket in one hand. He caught
up with the front row of the marchers; and, scuttling along backward,
directly in front of them, he began calling out certain words in a sort
of slogan, repeating them over and over again, until those nearest him
detected the purport of his utterances and started chanting them in time
with him.
Presently, as the chorus of definite sounds and the meaning of the
sounds spread along down the column, the Varsity boys took up the
refrain, and it rose and fell in a great, thundering cadence. And then
everybody made out its substance, the words being these:
“Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom! Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom!
CINNAMON SEED AND SANDY BOTTOM!”
The sun, following its usual custom, continued to go down, growing
redder and redder as it went; and Midsylvania, over and above the
triumph it had to celebrate and was celebrating, had also these three
things now added unto her: A new college yell, in this perfectly
meaningless line from an old song; a new cheer leader--her first, by the
way--in the person of a ragged black water boy; and a new football
idol to take to her heart, the same being an elderly gentleman who
knew nothing at all of the science of football, and doubtlessly cared
less--an idol who in the fullness of time would become a tradition, to
be treasured along with the noseless statue of Henry Clay and the beech
tree under which Daniel Boone slept one night.
So that explains why, each year after the main game, when the team of
a bigger and stronger Midsylvania have broken training, they drink a
rising toast to the memory of Major Putnam Stone, deceased; whereat, as
afore-stated, there are no heel-taps whatsoever.
CHAPTER IX. A KISS FOR KINDNESS
AS WILL be recalled, it was from the lips of His Honour, Judge Priest,
that I heard the story relating to those little scars upon the legs of
Mr. Herman Felsburg. It was from the same source that I gleaned certain
details concerning the manner of Mr. Felsburg's enlistment and services
as a private soldier in the Army of the Confederate States of America;
and it is these facts that make up the narrative I would now relate.
As Judge Priest gave them to me, with occasional interruptions by old
Doctor Lake, so now do I propose giving them to you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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