T. Haviland Hicks Senior | Page 5

that state they named
her after--"
"Hicks!" announced Butch, stealthily approaching the window, and
beckoning his companions. "Easy--look at him, Deke, there he is, Hicks,
the irrepressible! We might as well attempt to stab a rhinocerous to
death with a humming-bird's feather, as to try and reform him!"

Arrayed like a lily of the field, a model of sartorial splendor, Hicks
occupied a chair beneath the window, tilted back gracefully against the
side of the grub-shack. He had decked his splinter-structure with a
dazzling Palm Beach suit, and a glorious pink silk shirt, off-set by a
lurid scarf. A Panama hat decorated his head, white Oxfords and
flamboyant hosiery adorned his feet, while the inevitable Cheshire cat
grin beautified his cherubic countenance. A latest "best seller" was
propped on his knees, and as he perused its thrilling pages, he
carelessly strummed his beloved banjo, and in stentorian tones chanted
a sentimental ballad:
"Gone are the days--the golden days I'm dreaming of, I think I hear her
softly calling (plunkety-plunk) 'Will you be back? Will you be back?
(plunk-plunk) Back to the Car-o-li-nah you love?'"(plunkety-plunk),
For three golden campus years T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had gayly
pursued the even tenor (or basso, since he possessed a foghorn,
subterranean voice) of his Bannister career. He absolutely refused to
take life seriously, and he was forever arousing the wrath--mostly
pretended, for no one could be really angry with the genial youth--of
his comrades, by twanging his banjo and roaring out rollicking ballads
at all hours. He was never so happy as when entertaining a crowd of
happy students in his cozy quarters, or escorting a Hicks' Personally
Conducted expedition downtown for a Beef-Steak Bust, at his expense,
at Jerry's, the rendezvous of hungry collegians.
However, despite his butterfly existence, Hicks, possessed of a
scintillating mind, always set the scholastic pace for 1919, by means of
occasional study-sprints, as he characteristically called them. But when
it came to helping his beloved Dad realize a long-cherished ambition to
behold his only son and heir shatter Hicks, Sr.'s, celebrated athletic
records, it was a different story. T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., ever since he
committed the farcical faux pas of running the wrong way with the
pigskin in the Freshman-Sophomore football contest of his first year,
had been a super-colossal athletic joke at old Bannister.
His record to date, beside that reverse touchdown that won for the
Sophomores, consisted of scoring a home-run with the bases congested,

on a strike-out; of smashing hurdles and cross-bars on the track;
endangering his heedless career with the shot and hammer; and making
a ridiculous farce of every event he entered, to the vast hilarity of the
students, who, with the exception of Butch Brewster, had no idea his
ridiculous efforts were in earnest. In the high-jump, however, Hicks
had given considerable promise, which to date the grasshopper
collegian had failed to keep.
Hicks, the lovable, impulsive, and irrepressible, with his invariable
sunny disposition, his generous nature, and his democratic, loyal
comradeship for everybody, was loved by old Bannister. The students
forgave him his pestersome ways, his frequent torturing of them with
banjo-twanging and rollicking ballads. His classmates idolized him,
Juniors and Sophomores were his true friends, and entering Freshmen
always regarded this happy-go-lucky youth as a demigod of the
campus.
Big Butch Brewster, who was forever futilely lecturing the heedless
Hicks, thrust his head from the grub-shack window, fought down a grin,
and sternly arraigned his graceless comrade:
"Hicks, you frivolous, campus-cluttering, infinitesimal atom of nothing,
you labor under the insane delusion that college life is a continuous
vaudeville show. You absolutely refuse to take your Bannister years
seriously, you banjo-thumping, pillow-punishing, campus-torturing
nonentity. You will never grasp the splendid opportunities within your
reach! You have no ambition but to strum that banjo, roar ridiculous
songs, fuss up like a tailor's dummy, and pester your comrades, or drag
them down to Jerry's for the eats! You won't be earnest, you Human
Cipher, Before you entered Bannister, you formed your ideas and ideals
of campus life from colored posters, moving-pictures, magazine stories,
and stage dramas like 'Brown of Harvard"; you have surely lived up, or
down, to those ideals, you--"
"Them's harsh words, Butch!" joyously responded the grinning Hicks,
unchastened, for he knew good Butch Brewster would not, for a fortune,
have him forsake his care-free nature. "Thou loyal comrade of my
happy campus years, what wouldst thou of me?--have me don

sack-cloth and ashes, strike 'The Funeral March' on my golden lyre, and
cry out in anguish, 'ai! ai! 'Nay, nay, a couple of nays; college years are
all too brief; hence I shall, by my own original process, extract from
them all the sunshine and happiness possible, and by my wonderful
musical and vocal powers, bring joy to my colleagues, who--Ouch,
Butch--look