# The Freshman (Holman)/Chapter 6

Tate University was once called, fairly accurately, by a newspaper writer "a large football stadium with a college attached."
That this description fitted the place was chiefly due to its development in the five years of its existence under the progressive leadership of Dean Amos Pennypacker. Dr. Pennypacker looked like a college dean. His face was austere, his nose thin. Some of the student body said he had remained a bachelor because he was afraid his wife would call him by his first name.
Dean Pennypacker had a mania for expansion. He believed Tate would be a better place if it were a bigger place. He got donations from millionaires. He put the college on a business basis. New dormitories sprang up like magic. A football stadium finer than anything of its kind anywhere was built. There were additional tennis courts constructed. The alumni began scouring the country for athletic material to augment the glory of the new Tate on gridiron and diamond.
Though the bulk of the student body, which was now increased to three thousand, remained ​the hard-working sons of middle-class parents, scions of rich families began also to turn favorable eyes toward Tate.
The town of Tate kept pace with its chief industry, the University. An immense fireproof modern hostelry, the Hotel Tate, was erected on University Street, completely overshadowing the three or four small inns that had hitherto striven in vain to take care of the thousands that flocked to town on the occasion of the big football games. University Street, once a cowpath, became akin to Broadway. Department stores, chain drug and cigar stores, apartment houses, and movie theaters sprang up. Wealthy alumni came back to the scenes of their youth to spend their last years, erecting handsome residences on shady side streets or buying farms in the neighborhood.
Such was the Tate which Harold Lamb was now approaching.
The new field stone station sprawling artistically over a hundred yards of trackage was alive with humanity. Tatians in knickers and white-flannels were swarming over the concrete platforms and even the tracks, eager to meet returning friends. A solid line of yellow taxicabs waited on the other side of the station. Trunks were piled high everywhere.
Harold stood on the car platform and mar​veled. A half mile down the track, the train had begun to glide between stone, ivy-covered dormitories with their gayly curtained French windows, out of which laughing boy faces leaned. Keay had pointed out the athletic fields and the huge gray bulk that was the new gymnasium. But as the train now eased to a stop, Keay and Logan both leaped out with their suitcases into a mob of shouting students and left Harold to himself.
"Yea, Dave!" yelled a joyous voice.
"Yea, 'Spike'!" roared Dave Keay and leaped to pound a husky shoulder and pump a welcoming hand. Even the shy Logan seemed swallowed up by his friends.
Harold felt alone and deserted. He was fairly pushed down to the platform by the exiting collegians behind him. He stood on the hard concrete, his suitcase in one hand, his golf sticks in the other, smiling, half expecting some of the throng would rush up to him and make him welcome. He heard a sudden shout and saw the mob rush past him toward one of the rear cars. He looked back in time to see a familiar figure standing at the top of the car steps waving to his admirers. Harold took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and consulted it. It was the worn clipping from the Tate "Tattler." It confirmed his recognition of the stalwart youth now holding court ​on the car steps. It was Chester Trask. The great Tate hero had been on the train with him, and he had never known it! Rapidly Harold walked over to join the shouting crowd of Trask's greeters. But he was nearly bowled over by the rush of the late-comers among the students eager to welcome back Chester Trask to the scene of his triumphs.
Bewildered, Harold paused beside the train to catch his bearings and take a fresh grip upon the luggage that was slipping from his grasp. He happened to be standing directly underneath an open window of the smoking car. A passenger within chose that precise moment to light his pipe and flick the smoldering match carelessly out of the window. It landed upon the woolly white sweater Harold was wearing. Harold, absorbed in the scene about him, was for the instant unaware that the match was burning a hole in his sweater, sending a thin curl of acrid smoke into the air. But the passenger, gazing from the window, saw the impending danger. Leaning over the sill, he clapped a large paw upon Harold's back and smothered the blaze in its infancy.
That was enough for lonesome, anxiouseyed Harold. In this atmosphere of greeting and back-slapping, the Freshman guessed at once that some friendly soul was slapping ​him upon the back too. Deciding instantly that the tall, elderly, distinguished-looking man nearest him was the one who had made the advance, Harold, with a joyous exclamation, slapped that individual smartly on the back in return. Having caused his victim to turn quickly around, Harold executed deftly the jig step of Lester Laurel, thrust out an eager hand and said brightly, "My name's Harold Lamb. What's yours?"
He was chagrined to see the elderly stranger freeze up at once. Never before had this dignified gaffer been thus informally greeted. He frowned at Harold. He stared. Then he gave the explanation for his conduct with pompous pride.
"I am the Dean of this University," said the stranger crisply.
Harold's face fell and he moved away as quickly as possible. He had been in Tate but five minutes and already he had annoyed Dean Amos Pennypacker by slapping him upon the back! Tate was such a strange, confusing environment. He wondered if he would ever get used to it. If only he had Harlow Gaines or "Dusty" Rhoades or Dave Keay to show him around. He did not even know what to do next.
At that moment two young men with tanned faces and mischievous eyes seemed to solve ​this problem for him. They had observed his encounter with Dean Pennypacker and the taller of the two had commented, Tipe the latest sport-model Freshman with the old-fashioned trimmings. Let's ride him." The youth who had made this remark was Dan Sheldon, a Sophomore who was said on the campus to make Simon Legree look like the Good Samaritan.
Dan, as spokesman for the duo, now addressed Harold blandly, "Entering man?"
Harold nodded appreciatively.
"Have you been assigned a car to take you to the college?"
"Why—no," Harold stammered, in considerable relief that now a problem was about to be solved for him.
"Then come along with us, Freshman," said the tall youth briskly.
They led him around the station to an open touring car parked at the curb. A Negro chauffeur lolled asleep at the wheel. Harold's guides silently indicated that he and his bags were to enter the tonneau. Harold obeyed, spreading his luggage about him and settling back with a luxurious air. Tate certainly received her Freshmen in style! Harold shut the door of the car smartly. Sheldon and his companion retired swiftly from the scene.
The snapping-shut of the door awoke the ​Negro with a start. Without a word or a look behind, he pressed the starter of the car, threw it in gear and got under way with a jerk. So great a jerk indeed that it threw Dean Amos Pennypacker, who had been leaning against the mudguard talking with some friends, tumbling to the gutter. That dignified individual scrambled to his feet and dashed a few steps after the speeding car, only to be met with a cloud of black smoke from the exhaust He stood, a sight for Tate eyes to behold, shouting and gesticulating after his own car and chauffeur.
Meantime, Harold was driven swiftly by the now thoroughly aroused Negro, who thought of course that his passenger was Dean Pennypacker, his employer. The car swung into a gravel drive onto the campus. Harold found himself in a bewildering region of trim green grass, faced on all sides by towering buildings. The paths criss-crossing the grass were filled with perambulating students. Motor cars blared down the bluestone roads. Youths were leaning out of the windows of the dormitories and shouting to each other. Janitors were bearing heavy trunks through the entrances. Express wagons, hand trucks and other vehicles jerked rapidly about All was bustle and confusion.
The dean's car drew smoothly up to the ​side door of an immense Grecian building located in almost the exact center of the campus. Harold, gathering that he was to alight, assembled his multitudinous luggage and, opening the car door, stepped to the ground. In that instant the Negro chauffeur caught sight of his passenger. The Ethiopian gasped. He seemed to turn pale under his black skin.
"Mah goodness," he cried. "I thought you was the dean. Mah goodness, I'll ketch it now!"
He stared at Harold, torn between anger at the Freshman, of whom he suspected a prank, and fear for the wrath with which his employer would greet him. The chauffeur stepped on the gas, turned sharply around and whirled the car back toward the station.
Harold turned red afresh. He was uncertain whether his youthful guide at the station had put a joke over on him or whether that merry individual had made an honest mistake. Harold remembered seeing groups of students pouring into the building beside which he now stood. Concluding that he had best do as the other Tatians had done, he looked around him and found a smaller entrance almost directly in front of him. After a moment's hesitation, he walked over, opened the door and sauntered expectantly in.
A sign on the brick wall above Harold's ​head as he entered the building read: Stage Entrance. Tate Auditorium. In the great assembly hall of the auditorium proper the vhole student body of Tate was gathering to be annoyed by the dean's opening address. It was the usual initial event signalizing the beginning of the college year and regarded as a nuisance by everybody, including the dean.
Harold, though he did not realize it, was now in the dusty region behind the curtain that separated the auditorium stage from the audience outside. The building was frequently used for theatricals. When the pièce de résistance was merely oratory, the curtain was kept lowered and only the front part of the stage used. The last show given in the Tate auditorium had been an Ibsen tragedy by the "Tate Players" and the place had not been touched back stage since. Harold found himself in what resembled a sparsely furnished room. There was a tall pedestal and two chairs. A snowy landscape painting hung lopsided on the wall. Dust covered everything. He looked around him and found to his dismay that he was alone.
Suddenly Harold heard a thin whine. It came from the conglomeration of ropes and pulleys running along the top of the curtain. Frightened for an instant, he listened. To his relief he decided that it must be a kitten. ​He pulled over the pedestal, set it urider the spot whence the noise had come and climbed wabblingly up on it. He could just reach his long arms up into the ropes. His finger-tips touched soft, warm fur. Then something sharp inside of a furry mass struck his arm. A tiny black kitten had leaped upon him just above the wrist. The sudden impact startled Harold and caused him to lose his balance on the pedestal. His sole support started swaying.
Harold thrust the kitten under his sweater and tried hard to maintain his equilibrium.
At that precise moment Dan Sheldon, who with several of his Sophomore cronies had followed the Freshman into the wings and were now concealing their mirth as they watched him from this vantage spot, rang the curtain on the stage smartly aloft.
On the other side of the curtain, in the main body of the Tate auditorium, sat the whole student body awaiting the arrival of the delayed Dean Pennypacker and his boring address!
To the amazement of the Tatians, they now gazed, not upon the dignified figure of the dean, but upon a frightened Freshman endeavoring wildly to regain his balance upon a tall, frail pedestal! Even as they stared at this strange spectacle, the Freshman lost ​his struggle to stay aloft, slipped, grasped desperately at the air and crashed to the floor!
The audience, every eye riveted upon the stage, gasped. Then they roared with laughter.
Rising to his feet, Harold turned and faced the sea of mirthful faces and loud guffaws. He stood bewildered for an instant. Then he whirled around and started to rush off the stage. In his haste he upset the water pitcher resting near by on the table. His suitcase came unfastened and its contents spread over the stage.
Even when he at last attained the haven of the wings, it developed that Harold was not to be let off so easily. The shouts of laughter and catcalls from the auditorium were still ringing as stout arms grabbed him.
"Aren't you going to stay and make a speech?" sounded the voice of Sheldon in Harold's blushing ears.
"You'll have to say a few words of greeting to the student body," suavely interpolated another Sophomore. "It's a custom. You'll be unpopular if you don't. See—these Freshmen are all anxious to go out and talk." He pointed to a group of ten or more white-faced youths, obviously green and scared to death. They were herded together back stage and ​guarded by three or four of the Sophomore cronies of Harold's tormentors.
Harold hesitated doubtfully. "You'll be unpopular if you don't." That was the warning that impressed him. For he was deeply anxious to be popular. If he was ever going to be a second Chester Trask, he mustn't take any chances of being unpopular. He remembered Trask's suavity at speech-making at the Cleveland alumni meeting.
Harold gulped. Then he said, "Well—if I'm expected to say something—I suppose—I ought to."
He walked out to the front of the stage, the kitten still held absurdly under his sweater. He wondered if the trembling of his knees looked as badly as it felt. He faced the sea of white, tittering faces in front of him. The crowd had arrived early, knowing what to expect. It was, as Sheldon and the others had explained, the custom at Tate to have Freshmen address the opening assemblage before the dean arrived. Each year a Sophomore committee lined up likely victims and inveigled them back stage. Then pushed them out to the delight and merriment of their fellow students. It was the opening event in the hazing season. Sheldon and Garrity had been at the station for the purpose of lining up the Freshman "speakers" and they had ​picked Harold as the prize of the afternoon.
Harold's mouth opened twice before it emitted a word. Then the words came squeakily and haltingly, "Fellow students of Tate, I am here—here—yes, I am here—here—" Harold stopped. His face was suffused with red. The kitten, grown restless under his heavy sweater, was clawing into him, tearing his shirt, pricking his flesh. And more complications were on their way. For with stately tread a large, sleek cat came waddling out from the direction of the wings. The mother cat had come in search of her wandering kitten.
The feline paused at Harold's feet. Then a small tail protruding under Harold's sweater caught her sharp green eyes. She stopped, looked up and meowed. She started to climb the Freshman's leg, but he pushed her away. Then there were convulsive movements under the white sweater, clawings and scratchings that caused the would-be orator to wince and dance about on his feet. Then, with a final effort, the kitten reached open air at the neck of Harold's sweater and emerged upon his shoulder. With relief he seized the furry bundle gently and set the kitten upon the floor. Mother cat and offspring scampered off the stage and into the wings together.
​Harold would at that moment have liked to follow them, but of course he couldn't. That would spoil everything. This was one of the big chances that comes once or twice in the lifetime of a man.
Harold straightened up and faced his audience smiling. "You'll be unpopular if you don't speak," he had been warned. What would Chester Trask do under circumstances like these? What would Lester Laurel, "The College Hero," do? Suddenly Harold felt in his pocket for the diary in which he had inscribed the memorable words of Lester. The book was not there. He looked down upon the stage, and there it lay, jolted out of his pocket in his encounter with the kitten. He picked it up. The familiar words came back to him out of his confusion. An inspiration!
To the amazement of the merrymakers in front of him, Harold Lamb stopped, struck an attitude, thrust out his right hand in a gesture of greeting, smiled broadly and exclaimed very cockily, "I'm just a regular fellow. Step right up and call me 'Speedy'!"
You could have knocked the entire student body of Tate over with a feather, including Harold's Sophomore stage-managers in the wings. The army of Tatians was stunned. Then it broke abruptly into mingled laughs and applause.
Several voices shouted "Atta ​boy, 'Speedy'!" and "You're all right, kid." They were uncertain whether the Freshman was wiser than he looked or whether his strange actions were another sign of his amazing greenness. But they were amused.
As he rushed off the stage, Sheldon slapped him on the back and yelled, "You're a darb, 'Speedy'!" The Sophomore held out his hand. Harold at once broke into the Lester Laurel jig step. His feet twinkled three or four times rapidly. He struck a cocky attitude. His right hand shot out and grasped the right hand of Dan Sheldon in a hearty grip.
"Put her there, 'Speedy'!" shouted another Sophomore. Harold did the movie actor's greeting again.
The Sophs shrieked with merriment. They crowded around with outstretched hands encouraging Harold's antics. The Freshman repeated his stunt again and again, each time to new outbursts of joy on the part of his audience.
"Oh, boy!" cried one Soph, almost doubling up with laughter. "'Step right up and call me "Speedy"'—you bet we will, kid. That's your name from now on—'Speedy' Lamb."
Harold, who believed he was making the hit of his life—and on the first day of college at that—was delighted. He was tickled pink. ​He took all the laughter as a tribute to his likeableness. The students had received him with open arms. Less than an hour in Tate and everybody knew him! He even saw Chester Trask among the students back-stage. Harold was infinitely grateful to Sheldon. He was keen for the whole Sophomore class. They were fine fellows. What if they had put him into Dean Pennypacker's car—by mistake? He longed to do something for the Sophomores for all they had already done for him.
"Say, I tell you what," he radiated to Sheldon, "you get all your friends together and I'll stand treat for some ice cream. Where's a real good ice cream parlor around here anyway? Some place where they serve banana splits and all the high-class dishes."
Sheldon felt like howling, but he controlled himself and replied, "Sure, 'Speedy,' that's the stuff. The Palace is the joint you mean. High class, A-number-one in every respect. A couple of chocolate marshmallow meringues down there and your own grandmother wouldn't know you. You want to blow the boys to a little indigestion? O. K. I'll get 'em together. But first, cheese it the cop. Here comes old Pennypacker up the line in that buzz wagon you almost pinched from him. Up and at 'em, men!"
​Harold followed the back stage contingent as they dashed out of the side door and around to the front entrance. Arrived there, they walked demurely in and took seats in the back of the huge auditorium just as Dean Pennypacker, looking very dignified in fresh linen and a long shiny black frock coat stepped out upon the rostrum. Harold noticed that somebody had been thoughtful enough to pull down the curtain.
The dean repeated substantially the same address that he had been making for the past five years on the opening day of college. He directed his talk primarily to "those among this assemblage who have lately come among us, who are taking up their labors at Tate University this semester for the first time, the members of the Freshman class." Harold sat bolt upright and inclined his ear earnestly unto wisdom. The president bade these newcomers to toil diligently and do many other highly edifying things. He interspersed this with an elephantine witticism to the effect that the entering men were not to believe that all that glittered was gold when dealing with members of the class immediately above them. The Seniors, who had been snickering at this remark for three years, snickered cynically anew. An almost audible sigh of relief went up from the warm, densely packed gathering ​as Dean Pennypacker concluded his remarks and mopped his thin white brow with an immense handkerchief.
During the last few moments of the oration, Sheldon had been holding whispered consultations with those about him. When Harold had departed with the exiting mob and was once more on the cinder path outside, he found a group of about twenty grinning Sophomores surrounding him.
"Well, how about that ice cream, 'Speedy'?" Sheldon suggested with a broad grin.
"Oh, I'm a man of my word, you bet," Harold asserted jauntily. "Come on."
He was a little disturbed to see all twenty of the group around him fall in behind himself and the two Sophomore guides. Harold started to walk across the grass, but Sheldon seized his coat sleeve. "Don't walk on the grass. Freshman," he warned. "Not allowed, you know. Got to be a Sophomore to walk on the grass."
Harold, abashed, fell back. The little brigade turned to the right on a path leading down toward the iron gate that was the main exit of the college into University Street. To every group that they passed, Sheldon shouted, "Come on! Ice cream. 'Speedy's' treating."
Harold's party increased in size like a rolling snowball. By the time it had reached the ​ornamental entrance of the Palace, it numbered over thirty. The students were madly cheering Harold and he took it very seriously, like a hero getting his just recognition.
The horde tramped into the Palace and lined up at the fountain. Joe Dugan, the proprietor, famous among all Tatians for his drooping mustaches and his imperturbability, surveyed the new customers with a wary eye. His two colored assistants rolled their optics in surprise.
"Double marshmallow meringue, Joe," called several voices. "Make mine a strawberry frap, Joe," sang out several more.
Harold was disturbed. He had expected them to order ice cream cones. His hand wandered into his pocket. Would he be able to back up his generosity with cold cash?
Joe spoke. He said dryly, "Yeh, and who's going to pay for 'em all?"
Sheldon pushed forward his protégé proudly. "Joseph," the Sophomore said severely, "don't you know that 'Speedy' Lamb never fails to settle his debts of honor? 'Speedy' will pay—with pleasure."
"Who—him?" asked Joe. "You mean the Freshman?"
"Certainly I'll pay," Harold announced loudly, feeling that his newly won and precious popularity was being assailed. "These ​fellows are my guests. You may present the bill to me." He pulled a five-dollar note from his pocket and waved it aloft.
Joe was convinced. He gave the signal to his assistants for the orgy to commence. In a few minutes The Palace was turned into a soda, ice cream, frappé and sundae shambles. Harold tried a double marshmallow meringue and discovered it a very rich concoction made of soft ice cream, nuts, marshmallow whip, meringue and a secret ingredient that only the towheaded Joe, its inventor, knew. Harold found it too rich for his taste. But his guests consumed them like peanuts.
As each man finished, he set his empty glass or dish down oir the counter, waved an indefinite salutation to Harold and disappeared out of the store. In an amazingly short time, the Freshman found himself alone with a half-consumed meringue, Joe Dugan and the bill lying in front of him and waiting to be paid. Harold finished the last of the meringue. Without looking at the bill, he covered it with his five-dollar note and stood waiting for his change. Joe sardonically played a tune on his cash register. Reaching into the till, he pulled out some coins and laid them before Harold. His change. It amounted to three cents. Harold, striving to ​conceal his chagrin, thrust it into his trousers pocket.
Joe looked at him sadly, as was Joe's wont. "A fine bunch of grafters," the soda king drawled. "You stick with them, kid, and they'll have your shirt in a week. I know that gang."
Harold bristled. "On the contrary, they're very fine fellows. Personal friends of mine."
Joe raised thin hands aloft, indicating that it was none of his business. "All right, kid, all right," he conceded. "Have it your own way. Only I've been around here twenty years longer than you have. Just remember that."
And he started on the job of washing thirty glasses.