CHAPTER VIII.
FUN AT THE THEATER.
Up the gallery of the Hyperion Theater, the Freshman class wentbouncing with a great clatter and stamping of feet. It was the nightof the Glee Club concert, toward the end of January, which, in thedays of Frank Armstrong's Freshman year, opened the festivities ofJunior Promenade, the great social function of Yale. The Promenadehas for generations been known as the "Junior Prom," but it is notstrictly a Junior occasion. Seniors, and even Sophomores whosefinances are not too low to permit the purchase of a ticket, may go,but in spite of the fact that many of these classes do go, the Promis still largely a Junior affair. Around the Prom, or ball, whichbrings the social gaiety to a close, have grown in the course ofyears other entertainments for the fair guests and their chaperons,who gather in New Haven by the hundred from the length and breadth ofthe land. Of these the Glee Club concert was one where the Freshmenin those days, for it has all been changed since, were tolerated inthe upper gallery of the theater. They could not sit in the pit orbalcony of the house. Custom had allowed them certain rights andtheir "stunts" were looked forward to as a part of the entertainment.The Freshmen were not supposed to interfere with the concert itselfbut frequently did interfere in spite of the restraining influenceof Junior guards who were scattered through the gallery. But thethrowing of confetti, streamers and cards to the fair guests wastolerated and expected. Occasionally the Freshmen overdid the thingand not infrequently a "rough-house" of considerable proportions heldsway.
Frank's class was a lively one, as had been shown on severaloccasions during the fall and early winter. A number of the membershad a faculty for getting into trouble on all occasions. Half adozen of them had been only a few days before up before the FreshmanCommittee for attempting to break up a dance in one of the localhalls of the city, which necessitated the rushing of a squad ofpolice to the scene. Minor mischief was always being done. Rumorswere rife that the Freshmen were going to perpetrate something newon the night of the Glee Club concert. Therefore the Junior guardswere more than usually vigilant.
"What's that you have under your coat?" demands a Junior as a tallFreshman appears on the landing of the stairs with the skirts of hisraincoat bulging suspiciously.
"Nothing but myself," backing away.
"Come on, open up! What have you got?"
"Nothing, I tell you," but the Junior lays violent hands on himand after a moment's search drags forth a squawking hen! She flapsherself free from the grip of her rescuer and creates a disturbancewhich brings scores up to the landing on the double quick.
The hen is finally captured and carried out, squalling tremendouslyat the unaccustomed usage.
Other Freshmen are captured with noise-making devices, living andmechanical, and thrown out bodily or the objectionable instruments oftorture taken from them. But some have slipped past even the vigilanteyes of the guards, and are ready to carry out the Freshman part ofthe entertainment as classes before them have done.
Inside the theater the gallery is jammed till it can hold no more.There is a babel of voices through which occasionally cuts the sharpYale cheer, that the Freshmen now, with three months of practice,have learned to perfection. Cheers, howls and catcalls make thatgallery a perfect bedlam.
Over the gallery front, looking fearfully insecure in their highperch, hang scores of boys angling for the attention of the Juniors'young ladies with a long string to which is attached a card andperhaps a pencil. One side of the card bears a fond message to thefair guest below, and the other side is blank for the answer, whichthe Freshman above hopes to catch in his angling. And frequently hedoes. The Junior takes it all in good part.
"O, lovely creature, will you be mine, will you let me hold yourlily-white hand when I'm a Junior?" is the rather disconcertingmessage a young lady in one of the boxes pulls down after it has beendangled in front of her nose for a minute or two by Freshman hands inthe top gallery. The Freshman above having established communication,waits impatiently for an answer. Presently it is written in the boxbelow and is pulled up eagerly.
"No, I don't like the color of your hair."
"I'll dye it blue if that will help any," may be the next message.Fifty men are angling at a time and the lines sometimes get crossed.It is all great fun for the girls who enter into the spirit of thething and are not disturbed, after the first shock, at the ardentmessages that are swung in front of their faces.
Of course, every one cannot angle for love messages in the pitbecause, although the front of the gallery resembles a grape-hunggarden wall with the clustering heads, there are several hundredsbehind the first row. They content themselves with throwing confettiand paper streamers into the pit and boxes until there is a jungleof it below, through which a late-comer must literally break hisway. The floor itself is covered with confetti and cards whereon areprinted in prose and verse amazing praises for the class in the uppergallery, recounting what that class will do when it becomes a Juniorclass two years later and shall have the position of honor.
On this particular night everything went well in the gallery untilthe program was half over. Then trouble broke loose, for alllegitimate means for attracting attention had been exhausted. At themoment the quartet was delivering itself of a touching melody andquiet was temporarily established even in the gallery. The tenor,striving for one of his highest notes, suddenly broke off with aviolent sneeze. Some one in the gallery had thrown a tissue paper wadof snuff against the scenery behind the quartet. The paper broke andthe snuff, light as feathers, permeated the air.
The bass singer of the quartet immediately followed the tenor witha resounding bellow at which the audience, not knowing the cause,burst into roars of laughter. But soon they changed from laughingto sneezing, for handfuls of the snuff were now pitched over thegallery rail by the offenders, and the coughing and sneezing becamegeneral. No one was exempt. Dignified chaperons, pretty girls andtheir escorts joined in the chorus. The quartet retired in confusion,holding onto their noses.
"Stop it, stop it!"
"Get out, Freshmen," yelled the guards, but so thick was the press inthe gallery that the guards were powerless to get at the offenders.To cap the climax, a Freshman emptied about a bushel of fine,powderlike confetti on the heads of the people below, while stillanother opened a pillow of fine down feathers which, dropping to thepit of the theater in a cloud, covered the gowns of the ladies. Thefeathers insinuated themselves down the necks of everyone.
Having worked their last indignity, two score of the Freshmen tumbleddown the gallery stairs like a hurricane, and broke pell-mell for thestreet with the guard after them. Some punches were delivered, butmost of the Freshmen escaped, yelling, with whole skins.
Then the Glee Club concert went on again and was not interruptedbut once, when someone threw a small rubber ball from the gallerywhich struck the leader fairly on top of his head and bounced twentyfeet into the air to the great amusement of the audience and thediscomfort of the leader.
"Some night!" observed the Codfish as the boys reached their room insafety. "I got hit three times in the overflow. Gee whiz, how thosefeathers stick!"
"Were you the pillow man?" inquired Frank.
"I was that same. Have you noticed the absence of two of our bestcushions?"
"My cushions," gasped Frank, "and where are the cases?"
"When the storm burst I didn't have time to get them under cover.They go to the Hyperion management as a souvenir."
"More likely to the Junior scouts," suggested Jimmy.
"Thoughtful kid, my initials were on them," said Frank. "You couldcreate trouble for someone if you were alone on a desert island."
But no trouble did come out of the incident for the great danceitself coming on the next evening, as it did, overshadowed such minorthings as the Freshman class and its doings.
But the affair had one result. It was the last time that the GleeClub concert was ever held at the Hyperion. After that year it wentto one of the University halls where Freshmen, fishing from th
e topgallery, tantalizing feathers and tormenting snuff were not known,and where the concert went its full length without disturbance of anykind.
Frank Armstrong, while a frequent visitor at the swimming pool,had not gone out for the Freshman team. Football had claimed hisattention in the fall when swimming practice first began, andalthough urged to join the Freshman team by classmates, who had seenhim in the pool, he had declined.
"I want to have a good big deposit in the education bank whenbaseball opens up," he used to say.
"You're a blooming old grind," the Codfish would retort when Frankadvanced his reasons for keeping the time free for studies. "Youaren't doing as much as I am for the class."
"But I'm doing as much as I can for the class and something formyself."
"Selfish, selfish. Here's the Freshman swimming team staggeringalong----"
"Floundering along, you mean."
"Fishes flounder, and there's no fish on the team, human orotherwise. That's the reason they ought to have a good, able-bodiedfish like yourself, scales and all, to help 'em out."
But in spite of Frank's desire to keep away from swimming, other thanas a pastime, and to keep in fair condition, he became drawn intoit unintentionally. One day, sprinting down the length of the poolto overtake Jimmy, he attracted the attention of Max, the swimminginstructor, who kept an eagle eye on the outlook for promisingtalent.
"Where you learn to svim like dat?" inquired Max as Frank pulledhimself out of the water at the end of the pool while Jimmy hunggasping with his exertions on the edge.
"O, paddling around," returned Frank.
"Pretty good paddlin', I guess. Vhat's your name?"
"Armstrong."
"Freshman?"
"Yes."
"Ever do any racing?"
"A little."
"Here, let's see if you can svim fifty yards fast."
"O, but I'm not in training."
"Don't make no difference about dat. Svim up one length and backagain. I see your time. Come on, I tink you can svim fast."
Frank, thus urged, took a racing dive, paddled easily to the otherend of the pool, turned leisurely and came back to the starting point.
"Umph!" grunted the swimming instructor. "Dirty-five seconds, dat'sbad. You ought to do it five seconds bedder!"
Frank grinned, thinking he was nicely out of the difficulty, for heargued with himself that in justice to his work he could not give thetime necessary this year at least to go in for swimming.
But he reckoned without Max who stood squinting at him.
"Now," said the instructor, "vhen you've got your vind again I vantyou to do dat over again. Und doan loaf along so much, move dose armsand legs a little bid faster."
Jimmy laughed, for he knew Frank was trying to get out of swimmingtraining. But Frank was fairly caught now, and there was nothing forhim to do but to swim the distance again. He perched on the edge ofthe pool end, and balanced for the start as Burton had shown him.He took the water as cleanly as a knife and using a graceful butpowerful crawl shot down to the further end, turned half under waterand came back with a quickening gait until his hand touched the poolend where Max stood with his eyes glued on the watch.
"Dirty seconds," said the instructor half to himself. And then toFrank. "Vhy didn't you dell me dat before? I vant you to come hereeffery day and svim. Dis Freshman bunch of mine ain't no good. You'llhelp? Who showed you how to svim like dat anyway?"
"O, a fellow named Burton."
"Who?"
"Burton, one of your Yale captains."
"O, Burton, hey? Are you de fellar Armstrong dat svam down at TraversIsland last summer?"
Frank nodded.
"Py jiminy, vhy didn't you dell me dat before? Dat settles it. Nowyou got to come and help out this Freshman bunch."
That was the end of Frank's resolution not to get mixed up inathletics until the baseball practice opened. Every day found himat the pool, and under the careful guidance of the instructor heimproved steadily, and when the Freshman-Sophomore relay race cameoff he was selected as the man to swim the last relay for his class.This he did so well that, although starting with a handicap of tenfeet, he beat out his opponent by the breadth of a hand, and won theevent for the Freshmen.
Frank might have been induced to continue in the swimming game, forthe love of it, but in the last part of February the overpoweringcall for baseball candidates caught him, and he joined the uniformedcrowd that daily haunted the cage in the rear of the Gymnasium; andthrough the afternoons, when recitations permitted, he took his shareof batting, base-running, pitching, stopping grounders, and all thatgoes to the training of a Yale baseball player.
He was at first enrolled among the candidates for pitcher, but asthere seemed to be a great plenitude of pitchers, he was relegated tothe outfield, but glad to be on the squad on any position.
"What, our young Christy Mathewson out in the lots! Fie upon them!"exclaimed the Codfish when he heard.
"Even Napoleon had to begin," returned Frank. "Maybe they'll back meoff the field before long. College baseball isn't school baseball,you know."
With the coming of warmer weather, the crocuses and chirp of therobin in late March, the baseball and track men forsook the cage forthe open field, and there during the long afternoons the candidateswere put through their paces by the different coaches.
Coach Thomas, who had been appointed by the 'Varsity captain todrill the Freshman nine, was a believer in hard work and gave hispupils plenty of it to do. Naturally, men from the larger preparatoryschools, who had come to Yale with a reputation made in their school,had the first call. When they made good they held their positions.Armstrong and Turner, coming as they did from a school not among thehalf dozen prominent ones in the country, had to show their merit byhard fighting. But the coach played no favorites and when a playershowed merit in the practice he had due consideration.
Turner and Armstrong, the former as catcher and the latter aspitcher, worked as a battery for some of the early practice. Frank'sremarkable control stood him in good stead at first, but as thebatters improved in their hitting of straight balls, Frank droppedbehind in the race, and was now used only occasionally for battingpractice. He was one of the half-dozen substitutes in the outfield.Turner fell into a more fortunate situation as catchers on the squadwere scarce, and before two weeks of practice had elapsed, was insecond place in the race for the position of backstop on the Freshmannine.