The Tomahawk., 1917-01-25

1t has become Dauly infested Will
men. I'm one of them, not much worse
than the rest-pretty ordinarily de-
cent, in fact-and what did l do this
morning? In rushes Mangler, whom
I haven't seen for five years. He was
one Of my most loyal followers in col
lege-voted for me for president of the
freshmen class, got nine hash club
votes for me for treasurer of the ath-
letic association, and wanted to send
me to congress. He admired me, Man
,gler did. He was always following me
around, wanting to do things for me.
And yesterday he rushed in with his
hands out and l grabbed them and
yelled, Suffering cats, who left the
barn-dOOr Open?' and Hello, you Cog
gle-eyed pirate" and other pet names,
and was as glad to see him as if he
had had cholera; because there was
directors meeting in seven minutes
and I had luncheon date with Il big
customer and four days work to pack
into the afternoon, and my wife. had
lat last made me promise by the holes
I'm Ole Skjarssen's sweuter-my most
sacred oath-tO harness up that eve
ming and go over to the Van Bumpti-
Ouses for dinner.
Why couldn't he have come any 9th
er day in the year? But he couldn't,
and he was going out that evening and
was never coming back, as far as he
knew, and while gabbled along fever
ishly and tried to tell him what ma
tiOnal calamity it was that everything
had stacked up that day and couldn't
he stay over and wouldn't he have five
cigars anyway and smoke them all ut
once, and, by JOve, that directors meet
lng was due and could he drop around
for half an hour from 4 :32 to SOP
while 1 was splitting all this old Man.
gler kept getting quieter and quieter
and more uneasy and lonely around
the eyes. He was perfectly polite and
pleasant, but he didn't come back in
the afternoon and I know what he
thinks Of me. Thank heaven, he's not
as imaginative as / am. He doesn't
think half as badly of me as do of
myself.
err! This day tastes like asa
fetida. We're all miserable, migrate
full mollusks. Man is made of forget
fulness, with a little hide stretched
around it. Why, even back at school,
when we manufactured a man once
and he rose to fame and became the
leading scholar of the college, what
did he do? Just what any real man
would have done. He forgot us. He
threw us down. He pretty near ruined
us. He was our greatest calamity. We
didn't use any ungratefulneSs when we
made him, but he had Il streak of it in
him as broad as boulevard.
Grabbenheim his name was, curse
him. We didn't intend to make him.
1t was just another of those fool, care
less ideas which get into college boys
heads and grow like a fungus. Grab
benheim was joke to begin with.
Most all the roads to the gallows be-
gin with joke. But he shouldn't have
been ungrateful for all that. Lord,
what we did for that man!
Allie Bangs invented Grabbenheim.
But it wasn't his fault. He didn't
mean anything by it. He couldn't pos
sibly have fOreseen that the fellow
would grow up and shame us. 1t was
just Il thOughtless piece of deviltry, and
If Professor WOgg, our mathematics
professor, hadn't been so near-Sighted
and generally oblivious to life and it's
little unimportant details, nothing
would have come of it. Allie just did
it to amuse the class anyway. And
goodness knows we needed amusement
in WOgg's class.
It was in our sophomore year and
twelve of us We're preparing to wade
Through calculus under WOgg. We
didn't take calculus because we loved
lit. We had no more use for it than
1t had for us. The class was n sort of
little back-water eddy into which most
of us had drifted through conflicts in
our class schedules.
Remembering names and faces was
lWogg's greatest trial. No. that is a
mistake. He didn't try at all. He'd
given up long ago. He was so near
sighted that he could hardly see TO put
ion his glasses and all students looked
alike to him. When he made up his
roll in the fall he would ask for all
the AS and then all the BIS and take
our names alphabetically. Then he
would call on us from his roll book,
and the man who was reciting meant
mo more to him than dim. misty shape
with q name to it-any old name. And
Iif he got a good mark opposite the
wrong name or funk. opposite the
star scholars name, that was all rub
of the green" as we say now.
On the first day of the winter semes-
tier that year Wogg made us up into a
troll and when he had finished he peered
out through those bulfs-eye glasses OF
bis and asked: "Have overlooked any,
oDe?' Anti quick as flash Allie Bangs
answered: "Mr. .Grabbenheim." Some
of us laui he'd at the joke, but the pro