Stover at Yale | Page 2

had a daisy bunch, but some of the pearls have been side-tracked
to Princeton and Harvard."
"Bought up, eh?"
"Sure," said the speaker, with the profoundest conviction.
"Big chance, McNab, for the eleven this year," said Schley, in a thin,
anemic, authoritative sort of way. "Play football yourself?"
"Sure -- if any one will kick me," said McNab, who in fact had a sort of

roly-poly resemblance to the necessary pigskin. "Lord, I'm no
strength-breaker. I'm a funny man, side-splitting joker, regular cut-up --
didos and all that sort of thing. What are you out for?"
"A good time first, last, and always."
"Am I? Just ask me!" said McNab explosively; and in a justly
aggrieved tone he added: "Lord, haven't I slaved like a mule ten years
to get there I don't know how long it'll last, but while it does it will be a
lulu!"
"My old dad gave me a moral lecture."
"Sure. Opportunity -- character -- beauty of the classics -- hope to be
proud of my son -- you're a man now --"
"That's it."
"Sure thing. Lord, we'll be doing the same twenty-five years from
now," said McNab, who thus logically and to his own satisfaction
disposed of this fallacy. He added generously, however, with a wave of
his hand: "A father ought to talk that way -- the right thing -- wouldn't
care a flip of a mules's tail for my dad if he didn't. And say, by gravy,
he sort of got me, too damned impressive!"
"Really?"
"Honor bright." A flicker of reminiscent convictions passed over
McNab's frolicking face. "Yes, and I made a lot of resolutions, too --
good resolutions."
"Come off!"
"Well, that was day before yesterday."
The train started with a sudden crunching. A curious, excited thrill
possessed Stover. He had embarked, and the quick plunge into the
darkness of the long tunnel had, to his keenly sentimental imagination,
something of the (lark transition from one world into another. Behind

was the known and the accomplished; ahead the coming of man's estate
and man's freedom. He was his own master at last, free to go and to
come, free to venture and to experience, free to know that strange,
guarded mystery -- life -- and free, knowing it, to choose from among it
many ways.
And yet, he felt no lack of preparation. Looking back, he could
honestly say to himself that where a year ago he had seen darkly now
all was clear. He had found himself. He had gambled. He had
consumed surreptitiously at midnight a sufficient quantity of sickening
beer. He had consorted with men of uncontrollable passions and gone
his steady path. He had loved, hopelessly, madly, with all the intensity
and honesty of which he was capable, a woman -- a slightly older
woman -- who had played with the fragile wings of his boy's illusion
and left them wounded; he had fought down that weakness and learned
to look on a soft cheek and challenging eye with the calm, amused
control of a man, who invincibly henceforth would cast his life among
men. There was not much knowledge of life, if any, that could come to
him. He did not proclaim it, but quietly, as a great conviction, heritage
of sorrow and smashing disillusionments he knew it was so. He knew it
all -- he was a man; and this would give him an advantage among his
younger fellows in the free struggle for leadership that was now
opening to his joyful combative nature.
"It'll be a good fight, and I'll win," he said to himself, and his crossed
arms tightened with a quick, savage contractions, as if the idea were
something that could be pursued, tackled, and thrown headlong to the
ground.
"There's a couple of fellows from Lawrenceville coming up," said a
voice from a seat behind him. "McCarthy and Stover, they say, are
quite wonders."
"I've heard of Stover; end, wasn't he?"
"Yes, and the team's going to need ends badly."
It was the first time he had heard his name published abroad. He sat

erect, drawing up one knee and locking his hands over it in a strained
clasp. Suddenly the swimming vista of the smoky cars disappeared,
rolling up into the tense, crowded, banked arena, with white splotches
of human faces, climbing like daisy fields that moved restlessly,
nervously stirred by the same expectant tensity with which he stood on
the open field waiting for his chance to come.
"I like a fight -- a good fight," he said to himself, drawing in his breath;
and the wish seemed but a simple one, the call for the joyful shock of
bodies in fair combat. And life was nothing else -- a battle in the open
where courage and a thinking mind