# The Freshman (Holman)/Chapter 9

Harold's uneasiness about his finances was somewhat eased the next Monday morning by the arrival of tangible evidence of his growing fame in the person of "Hap" Hopkins, one of the Freshman candidates for the position of official photographer on the Tate "Tattler" editorial board.
The "Tattler" had become aware of the fact a year previous that the American public dislikes to read if it can look at pictures instead. A deprecatory development that numerous big city newspapers have discovered and catered to with great profit. The "Tattler" had installed the practice of printing a double spread of pictures every Saturday. A photographer was added to the stafif. As on all college papers, the real work of the "Tattler" was done by the various candidates for the editorial jobs. The literary giants already enjoying positions on the paper exercised merely supervisory duties and saw that the sweating aspirants slaved their heads off for the paper. When one was "out for the 'Tattler,'" one neither studied nor slept. No wonder two-thirds of the candidates dropped out ​of the competition before its long hard course was half run.
"Hap" Hopkins was a thin, earnest, terrifically aggressive Freshman who was desperately determined to become photographer of the "Tattler" board. Armed with a huge camera, he went dashing around the campus, the town and the athletic fields "shooting" everything in sight. He got under the feet of the football players. He had earned the wrath of Dean Pennypacker by attempting to stop that dignified personage while he was horseback-riding on a bridlepath outside of Tate. Hopkins had leaped from behind a bush, snapping his shutter as he came and nearly frightening the dean's nag out of a year's growth.
Hopkins had witnessed "Speedy" Lamb's performance in the Tate auditorium. He had heard the campus talk about "Speedy" since that time. Particularly among the upperclassmen members of the "Tattler" board who did their loafing around the paper's offices in East Hall "Speedy" had been mentioned with frequency and laughter. The eccentric Freshman's habit of dancing a jig when introduced, his awkward attempts at popularity, his ice cream "blow-out" were very ludicrous to the sophisticated "Tattler" journalists. "Speedy" came perilously near, in their ​estimation, to occupying the position of campus joke.
In "Hap" Hopkins' estimation, "Speedy" became news. A subject for a photograph. Hastening across the campus on the Monday following the Lakeport episode, Harold was stopped by the ambitious Hopkins, armed with his ubiquitous camera.
"Stand still a moment, please," Hopkins commanded. "Want to take your picture for the 'Tattler.'"
Harold was surprised but flattered. He stopped.
"Just go through that stuff you pulled at the auditorium, will you?" Hopkins requested. "You know, the jig and the handshake."
Harold was a little doubtful about this. During the past few days he had seemed to detect snickers when he performed this little Lester Laurel ritual, usually on request. Nevertheless he obliged Hopkins. As he struck the cocky posture at the end of the absurd jig, "Hap" "shot" him.
"When will it be in the paper?" Harold asked anxiously.
"Next Saturday morning," Hopkins, already on his way to other material, flung over his shoulder. As a matter of fact, the Freshman candidate had been deluging the "Tat​tier" editors with three times as much stuff as they could possibly use and could guarantee the appearance of nothing.
Nevertheless, when Harold picked up his "Tattler" from the Sayre front porch on his way to breakfast the following Saturday and opened at once to the pictorial section, he saw that Hopkins's masterpiece had been accepted. Smiling out from the center of the left-hand page, one hand extended in greeting, was the jaunty figure of "Speedy" Lamb. Under the photograph was the caption: "'Speedy' the Spender. This frisky Freshman is just a regular fellow who is leaving a trail of empty ice cream cones in his wake."
Here was the official recognition of his fame and popularity! To be photographed for the "Tattler" after only three weeks in college! The paper sacred to Chester Trask resting upon the famous sundial. He hurried back upstairs with the precious paper and sat down upon his bed to study the evidence of his renown with more meticulous care. He secured scissors and slit out the cocky figure of "'Speedy' the Spender" and the explanatory caption. Walking over to the wall near his dresser, he thoughtfully regarded the clipping of Chester Trask in football uniform that he had pinned there. Every day he had been accustomed to gaze at the great Trask and ​wonder whether he would ever be able to attain a lustrous reputation like that of the college hero.
With the impressiveness of a General Pershing remarking, "Lafayette, we are here," Harold pinned his own photograph underneath that of Chester Trask.
Throughout the day Harold accepted the grins that accompanied mention of the "Tattler" photograph as a tribute. He took good-naturedly, albeit a little sheepishly, Professor Stoddard's remark, following the Freshman's failure to translate an easy paragraph in French, that "'Speedy' the Spender didn't seem to spend much time on his French." Even the faculty had taken cognizance of his initiation into pictorial prominence. Lamb had visions now of the photograph being copied in the rotogravure sections of the New York papers, along with such shots as "Tate football warriors in strenuous workout" and "Tate boasts of fattest and thinnest Freshmen in America."
That afternoon he bought extra copies of the "Tattler" at McMasters' University News Stand, marked them and despatched them proudly to his parents, Peter Thatcher and Professor Harlow Gaines. Having mailed the papers, he dropped in at the Hotel Tate and sauntered up to Peggy's counter.
​"Did you see my picture in the 'Tattler' to-day, Peggy?" he asked proudly at once.
Peggy nodded affirmatively. She cast a thoughtful glance at him as if surprised that he should be so exuberant over breaking into print in such a way. As a matter of fact, she had herself clipped his picture out of a copy of the "Tattler." Even now it rested in her vanity case. But she had carefully cut the joshing caption from the picture and thrown it into the waste basket. She knew how the campus must be laughing at Harold's ridiculous, though quite characteristic, pose in the "Tattler" picture and the derisive lettering under it.
As if to confirm her belief, a group of students, accompanied by several town girls with whom they had been motoring, breezed into the Tate and up to the counter. Many of them were carrying "Tattlers" and waved, them at Harold.
"Here's the kid himself now!" shouted the voice of Dan Sheldon.
Peggy bit her lips and frowned. But Harold, delighted at the crowd gathering around him, faced them smiling.
However, he remained the center of attraction for only a moment. In the next instant a powerful automobile roared up to the curb outside. The crowd around the Fresh​man turned. Somebody shouted, "It's Chet Trask!" Instantly Harold's audience piled out of the hotel entrance, leaving him alone.
Dan Sheldon, the last to leave, paused to grin and tell his protégé, "You see, you can never be as popular as Chet Trask unless you play on the football team." And Dan, catching up with his pal, Garrity, winked broadly at the pudgy Sophomore.
Football! Golly, Harold thought, he hadn't gone out for the football team yet! In the rush of things he had neglected it.
"I'll go out for football then!" he cried to nobody in particular and brought his fist down upon the balustrade of the stairs near Peggy's counter. His fist struck something soft. Harold looked, nervous, and saw he had crushed a hat resting on the balustrade. It belonged to the tall, dignified-looking man standing there talking to another gentleman. Dean Pennypacker! Harold was horrified. But the dean relieved the frightened Freshman's mind by putting on his hat without noticing its battered condition and walking out of the hotel.
Harold lingered around the lobby of the hotel a little longer and had the pleasure of escorting Peggy home.
"I mailed copies of the 'Tattler' with my picture in it to my folks," he told her proudly.
​"Oh, do you think that's wise?" she protested impetuously.
"Why not?" he asked her at once. "They'll be tickled to death. Particularly my Uncle Peter, who helped me come to college. He's a prominent man himself and will appreciate what this means."
Peggy had an intuitive horror of what Uncle Peter would think. She attempted another tack.
"Harold, I asked Professor Stoddard about you. He boarded with us last year and left to take a house in Tate Manor when he got married," she went on gravely. "He said you weren't doing so well in your French. He said you were bright enough, but you apparently didn't take time to study."
"Oh, that's all right," Harold said airily, pleased at Peggy's interest in him. "We had harder French than he teaches in our high school. I've been pretty busy lately. Not much time to study."
"But you mustn't neglect your work," Peggy protested. "An awful lot of Freshmen flunk out in the Spring every year. You wouldn't want that to happen. And what about football? I thought you told me you were going out for the team."
He turned toward her with a start. His mouth half opened in chagrin. "Say," he ​ejaculated, "I clean forgot about football till this afternoon. You bet I want to try for the team. I told Chester Trask in Cleveland last Spring that that was one of the principal reasons I wanted to come here. Do you suppose it's too late now?"
Peggy considered. "They've been practicing two weeks now. But it's never too late for a good man."
"I'll report to-morrow afternoon," Harold promised.
"I certainly hope you will," Peggy replied rather primly, implying that her favor somehow hinged upon his keeping this promise. "You'll get a lot more satisfaction out of trying to play football and doing well at your studies than you will running around with' cheap sports like Dan Sheldon and 'Pudge' Garrity."
Harold's feelings were a little ruffled, "Why, they're fine fellows," he maintained. "They've shown me a lot of the ropes around here."
"Look out that they don't hang you with one of them," Peggy said tartly and regretted it immediately afterward, catching a glimpse of his hurt face. But she left him without attempting to ease the force of her remark.
After having dinner at Freshman Commons, Harold walked slowly down University Street ​alone. He was somewhat stunned. Peggy seemed to be impatient, angry at him. Why? Just when he was expecting to be praised. A vague feeling of resentment against her began forming. But he had little chance to think it over further, for in the next minute another and rather harsher feminine voice addressed him.
He looked up to discover the rather tall, sparse figure of Grace Beach standing in front of him. "Harold Lamb of all people," she said. "I called you up this afternoon. I am having a little party at my house this evening after the movies. Just an informal little affair in honor of my cousin, Delphine Smythe. You met her at Lakeport. Just a few friends. Drop around after the movies. We'll sing and dance and have a little lemonade and cake. Ever since our ride home together the other night I've thought I'd like to repay you for your kindness in giving Delphine and me a lift home."
Miss Beach strove to look coy. Harold did not fancy her, especially compared with the freshness and youth of Peggy. But he was a little sore at Peggy.
He managed to stammer, "Why, yes, I'd be pleased to come."
"That's wonderful," she said. "Perhaps you'll find Mr. Sheldon and Mr. Garrity in ​the movies and come down to Dinsmore Road afterward with them."
Harold had not as yet visited that famous institution, the "Tate Students' Motion Picture Palace. Gus Stover, Proprietor," though in this respect he was most unique. For it was the habit of the Tate student body to gather at the cinema every evening in the hour after dinner and before repairing to their rooms to study or for further diversion. Having committed himself to Grace Beach's party, Harold resolved to chuck work completely for that evening and seek Sheldon and Garrity at the movies. He walked down University Street and joined the mob that was crowding into the gayly lithographed entrance to Mr. Stover's highly lucrative emporium.
"Blind Pete," the peanut man, was standing as usual just to the left of the box office. Pete was a Tate institution, and every student dropped a dime in the blind man's tin cup and took out a bag of peanuts as a matter of course before he stepped up to the box-office window. That's why the floor crackled under Harold's feet as he filed into the theater and hunted for a vacant seat. There was a coating of peanut shells underneath.
The interior of the temple of cinema art ​was about on a par with Horowitz's Palace, in Sanford. The walls were an unesthetic canary yellow. There was no balcony. The hard, bare seats were double-riveted to the floor. Gus Stover didn't believe in taking chances.
The audience was friendly but boisterous. Chums greeted each other loudly across the intervening aisles. There was good-natured "razzing." A lanky Senior, desiring to join a fraternity brother two rows north, did so over the backs of the seats. The place was jammed with a gathering that was totally male. Ladies were not tolerated at Stover's. That was a tradition.
"Yoa, 'Speedy'!" shouted a voice. "Come on over here. Saving a seat for you." It was Dan Sheldon. Harold stumbled over ten assorted feet and tumbled into the seat beside his Sophomore friend.
"Going down to the widow's?" Sheldon asked curiously.
"Do you mean Miss Beach?" Harold asked innocently. "I didn't know she'd ever been married."
"She hasn't, innocent one. But the boys all call her 'the college widow.' Lord knows she'd have gotten married long ago if she could. It isn't from lack of trying. Watch ​your step around that bimbo, 'Speedy,' old kid." Sheldon winked elaborately at the youth beside him.
The angular young lady who played the piano arrived and the lights were snapped off. The tumult and the shouting died down a bit as the opening titles of a slapstick comedy were flashed upon the screen. The audience did not consider this custard-pie tidbit funny and promptly yelled "Rotten!" at the top of its collective lungs and continued to yell until the reel was over. In the intermission between the news reel and the feature picture, somebody shouted, "Parsons! 'Cy' Parsons. Music!" Others took up the cry. "Cy" Parsons was paged from all over the room. Finally he obliged. The tall slouching form of the Senior who had sold Harold the lion picture was pushed out into the main aisle and made its way down to the piano. The young lady on the piano bench deserted her post and took a seat in the front row. Parsons cramped his long legs under the keyboard.
In a few minutes "Cy" demonstrated why he had been summoned. He was a wizard on the keys. Not only an adept, but a humorist as well. He improvised music cues for the rather silly feature picture, playing "Shall We Gather at the River?" as the distraught heroine threatening drown ​herself and "How Dry I Am" when the extras on the screen were guzzling champagne in the orgy scene. Then he swung into a medley of Tate airs and the audience sang at the top of its lungs.
The audience did more than this. It seemed to be packed with mimics and ventriloquists. When a whistle blew on the screen, there came the shrill shriek of a factory siren from the darkness near Harold. Moving trains, chattering old women, rubes, guns shooting, horses galloping—all these were imitated by various geniuses in the packed house synonymously with their appearance on the silver sheet. They read the subtitles aloud in unison. They shouted "Look out!" at the top of their lungs as the villain was sneaking up upon the hero. And as the light flashed up at the end of the program, they rendered their unanimous verdict—"Rotten!" If they had happened to approve of the picture, they would have yelled the same thing.
Harold was thrilled. He resolved to come to the movies every night. He feared that Grace Beach's party would be an anti-climax after this. And it was.
If only "Cy" Parsons and his educated fingers could have been persuaded to come! Dan Sheldon, however, did not think much ​of Parsons. In reply to Harold's query, he described the musical picture-salesman as "a queer bird, poor as a church mouse, with no friends."
Dinsmore Road was only five minuses from Stover's. Grace Beach greeted the trio effusively at the door. Two other Sophomores had already arrived. The party, to Harold's mind, was a frost from the start. Mr. and Mrs. Beach remained in the living room for the first half hour or so. The angular Mr. Beach hovered over his radio and produced weird noises from it. Mrs. Beach rocked and knitted and monopolized the conversation, to the annoyance of the two younger women. How different from his own mother this fat, raspy-voiced old lady was, Harold thought.
With a great display of mechanical ingenuity Papa Beach wound the clock on the mantelpiece at ten o'clock and the two older people retired from the scene. The two girls and the students then clustered around the piano and Grace played Tate songs with a heavy touch. The rest attempted to sing, and did so very badly.
Another half hour dragged by. Sheldon turned the radio onto a jazz band number from a New York roof garden. Dan took Grace as his partner. Pudgy little Garrity placed his fat arm around Delphine. The ​other two Sophomores and Harold exchanged glances. All three were of the same mind. With a stealthy tread they approached the open front door and, seizing the opportunity when the four dancers had gyrated into the dining room, ducked out and down the steps into Dinsmore Road.
"What a washout," grumbled one Sophomore when they were safely down the street.
"We earned our lemonade and cake, but I'm glad I didn't have to stay for it," said the other.
Reaching his room, Harold was thinking how different Peggy Sayre was from Grace Beach and her cousin. With Peggy on his mind, he sat down at his desk, picked up his French book and tried manfully to translate the five poems of Alfred de Musset assigned the class for the morrow. In ten minutes his head had dropped into his arm, outstretched on the desk, and he was asleep.