THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. Charles S. Aiken
 
 A ^ i^uUM ftifu^ CtJtJ^ u^
 
 CHARLES SEDGWICK AIKEN 
 EDNAH AIKEN
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING
 
 <3 
 
 

 
 A Break in Training 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER ATHLETIC STORIES 
 
 ARTHUR RUHL 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY A FRONTISPIECE 
 IN COLOR 
 
 BY 
 
 HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 1906
 
 
 Copyright, 1900, 1904, by 
 THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, 1902, 1905, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Copyright, 1904, by 
 P. F. COLLIER & SON 
 
 Copyright, 1905, by 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 Copyright, 1906, by 
 THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published September, T906 
 
 THE outing press 
 
 deposit, n. y.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Break in Training i 
 
 Between the Acts 39 
 
 His First Race 69 
 
 The Quitter 91 
 
 Left Behind in 
 
 Wings of Clay 157 
 
 With the Hounds 173 
 
 The Men They Used to Be . . . .201
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 'T^HE Elder Halloway was speaking 
 -*■ fast, and looking very hard at a white 
 figure sweeping down the straightaway 
 across the field. 
 
 " But, my dear Sherwood," he snapped, 
 turning squarely on the trainer, " it's the 
 only thing! If you don't " 
 
 The Elder Halloway had held the rec- 
 ord for his distance for seven years after 
 he left college, and though he was old 
 enough to see a young Halloway try in 
 vain to get nearer than a second and 
 two-fifths to his father's time, yet he 
 still cared just as much as though at any 
 moment he could throw off some thirty 
 years as easily as he might his clothes, 
 and jump again into the running. He 
 was the sort of man who saw nothing to 
 smile about when each spring he buckled 
 about his straw hat his old track-team 
 
 3
 
 4 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 band. He could size up a flat-footed 
 freshman just as a horseman sizes up a 
 bandy-legged colt, and he knew more 
 in a minute about the connotative and 
 denotative significance of the word " fit " 
 than this particular trainer would know 
 in a lifetime. 
 
 The Elder Halloway was very enthu- 
 siastic and effervescent, and when he 
 stopped talking it meant that he was per- 
 plexed. When he twirled his watch-chain 
 it meant that he was worried. On this 
 occasion, as the figure rounded the lower 
 turn, so that the moving limbs were 
 thrown out clean and sharp against the 
 dark green of the trees, the Elder Hallo- 
 way stopped talking, took his watch from 
 the outside pocket of his Norfolk jacket, 
 and, with much vigor, yet quite abstract- 
 edly, began to whirl the chain round and 
 round his right forefinger. The cause of 
 the Elder Halloway's agitation was young 
 Mr. Hollis, who ran the half-mile. 
 
 Hollis was rounding the lower turn 
 in a " three-eighths " trial, and perform- 
 ing badly. For a youth who had occa-
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 5 
 
 sionally been known as the " Great," who 
 had a faded initial on his shirt, and the 
 prospect of running, within four days, 
 what was to be, in all human likelihood, 
 the last race of his life, he was doing 
 very badly indeed. Every eye was on 
 him. He could see the fielders, on the 
 green inside the cinder-path, pause, and 
 he noticed that the crack of the cricket- 
 bat from the practice-crease over beneath 
 the Willows ceased as he swept by. 
 Away up at the finish-line he could see 
 the trainer standing, watch in hand ; near 
 him a pole-vaulter leaned on his pole, his 
 clothing a chalk-white in the sunlight; 
 and all about, the half-dressed men, who 
 had run or were waiting for their trials, 
 stared down toward him with the same 
 critical and deferential gaze that they 
 would have bestowed on the action of a 
 coach-horse, or the wake of a racing 
 yacht. Most of this he saw out of the 
 corner of his eye, and the rest he felt, 
 because he had been there so many times 
 before; yet, though he went through the 
 motions of his beautiful stride, young
 
 6 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Mr. Hollis knew — and gritted his teeth 
 at the horrid truth of it — that he hated 
 that track, hated his task, and had in him 
 that moment no more of the spirit of the 
 race than a mule in a dusty treadmill. 
 
 The spring and lift were all gone out 
 of him. Even the turn, with his body 
 leaning inward and his legs eating up 
 twenty-three feet of the track a second, 
 thrilled him no more than the lazy gait 
 of a two-mile jog. He couldn't get his 
 back into it. Running only from his legs 
 down, he seemed to be carrying his body 
 as he would an over-loaded knapsack. 
 As he bore down to the finish of the quar- 
 ter, and knew that from where the train- 
 er stood, on to the last " two-twenty," he 
 must spurt, he shrank inwardly, as a tired 
 man shrinks from bracing up to an ice- 
 cold plunge. 
 
 The apathetic " Move up a little, 
 now ! " in the trainer's irritating voice, 
 rasped him as he passed between the 
 rows of eyes, and, squeezing his pace up 
 another notch, he pounded on. Theo- 
 retically, he was merely " letting out " a
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 7 
 
 bit — this wasn't a race — but he realized, 
 only too sickeningly, that his arms were 
 coming up; that there was a weakish 
 bending in the small of his back; that 
 his head was crooking over to one shoul- 
 der, with the cords of his neck drawn 
 taut on the other side — that, to put it 
 straight, he was " finishing on what he 
 had left." Too far gone to ease his legs 
 gradually to a walk, he stopped short as 
 he passed the stone mark. And as he 
 walked slowly back across the field to get 
 his sweater, a nasty sort of headachy pain 
 began to creep up the back of his head 
 and over his eyes. 
 
 Now, when a half-miler goes back on 
 a three-eighths trial, something is out of 
 joint. It is so alluring a distance. When 
 you're sent over a quarter you must, for 
 the moment, become a sprinter, and your 
 red-hot fifty-four seconds or so looks duf- 
 ferish enough beside the " fifty flat," or 
 better, of the racing quarter-miler. A 
 whole half-mile trial comes too seldom, 
 and is too stupendous an event to be con- 
 sidered lightly. But when you do a three-
 
 8 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 eighths trial in 1.27, with the last furlong 
 clipped out in 28 seconds, it looks as 
 though it would be mere play to finish 
 out the last 220 yards of the full half in 
 30 seconds more, and — voila! You've 
 beaten even time! And here was young 
 Hollis stumping back to his trainer, the 
 Tantalus-tremble all gone out of him, and 
 the black thought of what would have 
 come had this been a race, and had he fin- 
 ished it out, grinding hard in his brain. 
 
 " That was all right," said the trainer, 
 in that slow, grieved, forbearing tone of 
 his that was enough to demagnetize a 
 storage battery, and that said very much 
 plainer than any words that it wasn't at 
 all all right. " Don't be afraid of let- 
 ting yourself out, you know. Only four 
 days more." He was a good trainer in 
 some ways, but he knew nothing of 
 fourth dimensions. " Going to give you 
 some good stiff work to-morrow." 
 
 '' But I " Hollis started quickly to 
 
 speak in nervous irritation at the thought 
 of bracing up to another trial under the 
 watch, then wheeled about and moved
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 9 
 
 away toward the " gym," his spiked shp- 
 pers danghng in his hand. As he tiptoed 
 up the stone steps in his bare feet, the 
 baseball squad — bronzed, bare-armed, 
 rank with vigor and the zest of sport — 
 clattered out upon him. He drew aside, 
 grinning wanly as a man he knew, bla- 
 tant in his coppery bloom, made a pass 
 at him with a cleated shoe. 
 
 " Pish ! " chirped the man, sweetly. 
 
 " Go zuan! " grunted Mollis, in a rau- 
 cous voice, just as though he felt that 
 way. And going a bit hollow inside as he 
 thought how his words lied, he pattered 
 into the empty, lonely " gym," where the 
 sweet day was smothered in a thick at- 
 mosphere of oily leather and sweaty 
 clothes. 
 
 The cold shower only irritated him. 
 On the way to the training-table he 
 caught sight of his room-mate, Longacre, 
 and the rest of the crew-men, loafing 
 across the Square, in their flannels, fairly 
 lazy with strength and saturated with the 
 salt air and sunshine of their six-mile 
 pull along the Charles. That rather
 
 10 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 rubbed it in. Pretending not to see, he 
 turned sharply to the left and walked on 
 toward Beck alone. 
 
 For dinner, in the lifeless sultry June 
 twilight, there was warm tomato-soup 
 and warm roast-beef and warm rice- 
 pudding. And the plates were thick. 
 And the freshman " miler " with the 
 black wiry hair and the horse-teeth 
 crunched and gnawed and licked his 
 chops, and neighed for very joy of feed- 
 ing. Over the unpadded jangling table 
 glimmered a vision of a green arbor, from 
 which one saw trees and a quiet river, 
 of a snowy cloth, and things crisp, fruity, 
 and cold — glimmered and vanished in the 
 jangle. Mollis sniffed, nibbled, and 
 pushed away. 
 
 With nerves a bit on edge, very alert, 
 sleepless, yet with the feverish stubborn- 
 ness of the stale athlete sticking to his 
 rules, he turned into bed as the clocks 
 were tolling ten. It was very hot in the 
 room, the straw matting smelled of heat, 
 and over from the Square came the ris- 
 ing and falling whirr of the trolley-cars
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING li 
 
 as they swept toward and out from town. 
 On the ceiling was a patch of yellow 
 thrown there from the Yard lamp, and 
 through the door as he lay there he could 
 see, out beyond the open study window, 
 the moonshine in the elms. Somewhere 
 below, Longacre — the crew hadn't begun 
 strict training yet — and the rest were 
 singing : 
 
 " I h-a-ve to go to be-e-d by day — 
 
 And does — it not — seem hard — to you, 
 When all — the sky — is clear — and bloo — oo — " 
 
 He stood it for a while, and then leap- 
 ing out of bed he tiptoed to the front win- 
 dow and dashed out the contents of a 
 water-pitcher. The torturers scattered, 
 laughing, and with arms about each 
 other's shoulders loafed away. 
 
 But after he had flung himself down 
 again he could hear them, from far across 
 the Yard, mockingly fling back : 
 
 " Hear the grown-up people's feet 
 Still going past me on the street — 
 And I— should like — so — so — o much to play. 
 I have — to go — to be-e-ed— by day."
 
 12 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Hollis didn't know that he had slept at 
 all, until he noticed that the whirr of the 
 trolley-cars had grown to the locust-like 
 insistence of day. As he slouched out 
 into the study he saw, on the carpet be- 
 neath the letter-slot, a small envelope, 
 pale gray and blatantly feminine. He 
 turned it over to see the writing. That 
 Halloway girl! Wouldn't he come out 
 that afternoon to do eighteen holes — yes, 
 thirty-six if he had time — and spend the 
 night, of course. He could run in the 
 morning. He didn't deserve to be asked, 
 but the family were going to sail in a 
 week and — well, next year who could tell 
 where he would be? 
 
 Young Hollis got up and began to pace 
 the floor. He put a cigarette in his mouth 
 and lit a match before he caught himself. 
 The last time he had seen that Halloway 
 girl had been at three o'clock of a certain 
 morning in the preceding February when, 
 with the orchestra playing the tenth extra 
 and her partner buttoning and unbutton- 
 ing his gloves on the sidelines, he had 
 whirled her sixteen laps around the hall
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 13 
 
 without a breathing space, and not sur- 
 rendered her until the orchestra was half 
 way through " Home, Sweet Home." He 
 hadn't so much as written since. That 
 was only because he was discreet. 
 
 Young Hollis stared out at the Yard, 
 and the robins, and the sunlight now pour- 
 ing over the roofs of the dormitories, and 
 thought very hard. Then he walked into 
 his room, and glared into the glass. It 
 seemed that he looked very thin and old, 
 and drawn and hollow about the eyes. 
 He was still, you see, at that Grecian 
 period when straightness of limb and 
 bloom and what is vaguely known as a 
 just-off-the-yacht air are deemed quite 
 the most important social assets. He 
 dipped his head in a bowl of water, and 
 brushed his hair, and looked again. Then 
 he went into Longacre's room, where the 
 great babe lay sleeping. 
 
 "Bob," said he, "wake up! Do you 
 hear ! Wake up ! " 
 
 Longacre opened his sleepy eyes. 
 
 " Tell Sherwood," said he, " that I've 
 run this morning; that I've been called
 
 14 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 into town ; that I can't come out at four- 
 thirty; that it's — it's very important." 
 
 " Uh! " grunted Longacre. " Get out 
 — go along ! " And he turned to the wall. 
 Young Hollis watched him for a mo- 
 ment, running his hands slowly through 
 his hair. Then he scribbled a note, which 
 he pinned on his room-mate's coat. That 
 afternoon, a good hour before the first 
 runner came down to the field, young 
 Hollis, first-string man in the half-mile, 
 was alighting from a train at a station 
 in the woods, with Cambridge twenty 
 miles away. 
 
 She awaited him at the station, sitting 
 alone in a yellow Hempstead cart, and 
 hanging on for dear life to a bob-tailed 
 horse, who declined uproariously to stand 
 on more than two of his legs at a time. 
 That eased matters. 
 
 *' Dear me!" she exclaimed, "I do 
 wish you'd hurry and take these reins! 
 He wasn't meant for the road. He ought 
 to have been born an equestrian statue ! " 
 
 Hollis took the reins. His knowledge 
 of handling horses and driving elephants
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 15 
 
 was about equally extensive, but he took 
 them. Clop-clop-clop-clop they went 
 spanking along the country road, with 
 the hot summer air blown to coolness as 
 it whizzed past their ears. 
 
 On this particular afternoon, contrary 
 to her usual habit of going bare-headed. 
 Miss Halloway wore some sort of filmy, 
 pictury, hattish thing. The sun glim- 
 mered through it into little lights in her 
 hair just the way it glimmers through 
 leaves into the water. There was a light- 
 blue-and-gold band of Persian embroid- 
 ery which crossed her fawn-colored crash 
 waist just at the shoulders, and that 
 looked as though it felt at home beneath 
 the sun-pierced hat brim. From this band 
 upward to the low, loose knot at the nape 
 of Miss Halloway's neck was, as near 
 as is humanly possible, a straight line. 
 These and other details there were of a 
 sort which no man, and particularly a 
 very young man, who hadn't stayed out 
 of bed later than strict training hours, 
 danced, or been to a theater for a couple 
 of months, and who was rather hungry.
 
 l6 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 could afford to neglect. And so, as they 
 whirled round the gateway into the coun- 
 try-club grounds, the near wheel rasped 
 against the gate-stone. 
 
 " Gracious ! " remarked Miss Hallo- 
 way, " you're as reckless as Uncle 
 Jimmy! " 
 
 Hollis laughed lightly, and turned his 
 eyes to the front. Was it because he held 
 the reins? He had a feeling — one that 
 he had lost in those last few weeks — that 
 he had the whip-hand. 
 
 " Tidy little beast," he observed, and 
 he knew less of horses than he did of 
 driving them. "Like 'em lively!" 
 
 When they walked down to the first 
 tee everybody at the club-house followed 
 to see the younger Miss Halloway drive 
 off. It was, as Hollis was well aware, 
 generally regarded in the light of an 
 event. Addressing with her usual preci- 
 sion, she swung freely, and, topping, 
 sliced the ball a scant dozen yards, almost 
 under the skirts of the gallery. The look 
 which she tossed back to Hollis would 
 have been sufficient to send him alone
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 17 
 
 through half a dozen Balaclavas. With 
 the unerring skill of a man who had never 
 had a driver in his hands but twice be- 
 fore, he proceeded to drive clean away 
 over the bunker and within a dozen yards 
 of the green. 
 
 When he had run down a fifteen-foot 
 put, and taken the hole in three to Miss 
 Halloway's five, she leaned on the flag a 
 moment and looked at him. 
 
 " You know Teddy Battell," she said. 
 Hollis knew Teddy Battell very well in- 
 deed. 
 
 " I had him out here the other day, and 
 they all came down to watch us drive off. 
 He was — well, mine, you understand? 
 And I made about one hundred and fifty 
 on the drive ofi the first tee. And he 
 missed two strokes — and then — he broke 
 a window in the basement of the club- 
 house! " 
 
 "Teddy Battell," observed Hollis, "has 
 generally been very lucky." Miss Hallo- 
 way's eyes flashed. In her ethics of the 
 out-of-doors, a girl's guest had no right 
 to be a dufifer.
 
 l8 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 " There are some things," said Miss 
 Halloway, " which can never be for- 
 given." Teddy Battell, it happened, was 
 the man who had waited that night un- 
 til the orchestra had begun to play slowly 
 on the last bars of " Home, Sweet Home." 
 
 They walked on in the warm sunshine. 
 Young Hollis had known the girl only 
 as she sweetly reigned in that upper air 
 where lights dazzled and music was play- 
 ing. He had never seen her as he saw her 
 now — so near, so real, so touchable, and 
 then all at once so thrillingly Diana-like, 
 as she swung for the drive with the 
 rhythm-line sweeping down through her 
 uplifted arms, across her breast, and out 
 and away with a swirl from the tip of 
 her wind-blown skirt. And even as his 
 heart was leaping at the swift beauty of 
 it he would drive — as only one can when 
 one forgets — far, far beyond her best. 
 It was rankly brutal. He could not seem 
 to help it. And along with the mascu- 
 line fun of it, as they strode on and on, 
 there began to well up within him a sud- 
 den tremulous, half-tolerant tenderness.
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 19 
 
 On the home-stretch, as the afternoon 
 was waning, he lost his ball. He began 
 stamping back and forth through the 
 dusty timothy and clover outside the fair- 
 green, wondering what the girl would do. 
 What she did was to drop her club and, 
 up and back, swish-swish, come tramping 
 after him. She wasn't merely strolling, 
 or pecking at the grass, but trudging on 
 and on as though she were a brother. 
 And when he had given it up and started 
 back to pick up his club, she just straight- 
 ened up with the queerest look of half- 
 quizzical appeal, and brushed the hair from 
 her eyes. He approached her. They had 
 been together, it seemed to him, a long 
 while now, and they somehow knew each 
 other very well. The girl had unloosed 
 her stock, and crumpled it in her golf- 
 bag. She was warm, a wisp of hair 
 brushed her cheek, and bits of dust from 
 the clover were on her neck and arms. It 
 came over him very quickly. He felt that 
 he must take her in his arms and run 
 away with her — away and away and 
 away over infinite velvet meadows walled
 
 20 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 with dark shadowy woodlands, all in the 
 air and sunshine. 
 
 " Miss Halloway — " he said. 
 
 They were standing in the long grass, 
 face to face — she in the shadow, he to 
 sun. The girl looked hastily to the 
 ground. 
 
 " I'm afraid — you've lost it," said she. 
 
 " Yes! I have! I know I have! " said 
 Hollis, looking straight at Miss Hallo- 
 way. She lifted her eyes as quickly as 
 they had fallen. 
 
 " It's a pity," she said, a little help- 
 lessly. Then, running on, " People don't 
 often beat me. You have — " She 
 moved to where her golf -bag lay. 
 " You've done it so well that I hate to 
 have you lose the hole because we can't 
 find — " But she unbuckled the pocket, 
 and moving away just the least bit breath- 
 lessly, she tossed back a new ball. 
 
 The sun was reaching horizontally 
 through the elm branches when the cart 
 rolled out upon the road home. They 
 were just coming to a bit of the way 
 where for a good half-mile the road was
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 21 
 
 level as a floor, when Miss Halloway 
 dropped her score-card. Hollis was out 
 after it so promptly that the restless horse 
 pirouetted ahead a dozen yards or so be- 
 fore he picked it up. Just as he stooped 
 Miss Halloway gave a quick little cry, 
 and there was the sudden clatter of hoofs. 
 The horse had bolted. Hollis saw the 
 cart bounding away from him, the girl's 
 shoulders swaying as she sawed on the 
 reins. He leaped into his stride. With 
 his flannels and sneakers he was — except 
 for the lack of spikes — for all practical 
 purposes, in his racing clothes. The glory 
 of his strength, of having strength and 
 speed and wind that another man in his 
 place wouldn't have had, swept him on in 
 a whirlwind of fierce joy. A desperate 
 two-twenty, and he had the cart almost 
 in hand ; another forty yards, and swing- 
 ing over the back of the seat he seized the 
 reins. The girl sat up very straight with 
 her fists clenched. 
 
 " My ! " said she. 
 
 " It's — all — right," gasped Hollis, pull- 
 ing the horse back on his haunches. Then
 
 22 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 they went on, the reins very tight, young 
 HolHs grandly silent. 
 
 "How did he do it?" said Hollis 
 presently. Miss Halloway's eyes came 
 round very slowly — just the least crinkle 
 in their corners. 
 
 " Will you forgive me ? " 
 
 " Forgive ? " echoed Hollis. 
 
 " I — I gave him the whip," said Miss 
 Halloway very quickly. " He isn't used 
 to it." She gave him a look which she 
 might have bestowed on an Academician, 
 who had tossed off for her a sketch, or 
 to a poet, who had sighed her out a song, 
 and said, simply : " I wanted to see you 
 run ! 
 
 They drove presently up the winding 
 driveway and under the porte-cochere. 
 The elderly Jenkins, the Halloway house 
 servant since the memory of man, awaited 
 them. The family were gone. They were 
 in town and could not get out for dinner. 
 Not without appreciation of the formida- 
 ble nature of the situation and yet serene- 
 ly withal, Jenkins announced that dinner 
 was readv to be served.
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 23 
 
 " Mrs. Halloway said not to wait, 
 ma'am," said he. "That Mr. Mollis 
 would not want to wait, ma'am." 
 
 " To be sure," replied Miss Halloway, 
 and she turned to Hollis. " You won't 
 mind, will you, or think it queer? You 
 know you must — that is, we must dine 
 alone. You know you must expect — 
 things to be different — in the country?" 
 
 Hollis bowed. It appealed to him as 
 more discreet than shouting. 
 
 The table was set on the rear porch, 
 whence the lawn rolled gently down to 
 the river. The sun was very low, and the 
 cool smell of grass dampening with dew 
 breathed in with the coming twilight. 
 They sat down with the square of soft 
 linen between them and regarded each 
 other. 
 
 " I wonder," began Miss Halloway, 
 " what we'll have." 
 
 " I don't remember," said Hollis, grin- 
 ning, " to have been so excited in years." 
 
 " And besides," continued Miss Hallo- 
 way, " it's so important. Jenkins says 
 that he has his orders, but I'm so afraid
 
 24 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 that they aren't right — that it may — don't 
 you know — put you all out of condi- 
 tion " 
 
 The vision of a certain other table 
 clouded Hollis's sight for just an instant, 
 and then the picture came true. 
 
 " It doesn't make much difference, does 
 it," said he, tentatively, his eyes loitering 
 away toward the river, "about that? 
 This Is pretty nearly enough — just this." 
 ' " Oh, no ; it isn't," said Miss Halloway, 
 briskly. " / know. You have to have 
 steaks and red beef — the red beef of Old 
 England, tum-titi-tum-tum — and — and 
 r-r-raw, carnivorous things. I know 
 that." 
 
 As she spoke the self-contained Jen- 
 kins, gravely solicitous, set down before 
 her and Hollis grape-fruit — cold as the 
 snows of the Sierras, ambrosial with sher- 
 ry and ice. Hollis stared as one whose 
 dreams come true. He wished that it 
 were polite to ask how somebody had 
 known. 
 
 . . . . Afterward came tiny pink 
 clams — piquant, tantalizingly evanescent.
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 25 
 
 . . . . And then a steak — such a 
 steak — with mushrooms and hashed pota- 
 toes in cream, and crisp, mehing rolls, 
 and 
 
 " Uncle Cyrus, he was Uncle Jimmy's 
 father," said Miss Halloway, gazing at 
 Hollis very gravely, " spent six months 
 in Andersonville in war time, and they 
 lived on biscuits and old bones. I remem- 
 ber hearing Uncle Cyrus tell how they 
 felt when they were exchanged — the first 
 real dinner they had, you know " 
 
 " Yes ! " assented Hollis. 
 
 " I mean," said Miss Halloway, " don't 
 they give you anything good at the train- 
 ing-table ? " 
 
 " Oh, it's good for you," said Hollis. 
 " It's very good — but it isn't good to 
 eat." 
 
 Jenkins had appeared again. He set 
 on the soft linen at Hollis's hand a glass 
 — amber of tint, hollow like a lily, up 
 from the slender corolla of which bubbles 
 were laughing. 
 
 ** It was my orders, ma'am," observed 
 Jenkins, a well-repressed but very evi-
 
 26 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 dent perturbation ruffling his demeanor, 
 " that it was for Mr. Hollis, ma'am. 
 And I must explain, ma'am, that I was — 
 that he was — that is, that Mr. HoUis was 
 to have only one glass, ma'am." 
 
 Young Hollis would at that moment, 
 at Miss Halloway's suggestion, have 
 drunk treacle with enthusiasm. 
 
 As it was, the bite of the wine was the 
 last touch to give him a grip on the 
 world. 
 
 Every bit of the steak seemed to slip 
 into its predestined internal niche. There 
 spread through him that delicious sensa- 
 tion — a union of the joys of the Sybarite 
 and a master-carpenter — of knowing that 
 what he ate was doing him good. Miss 
 Halloway was just scooping out some 
 bar-le-duc and making ready the coffee 
 — the fragrance of coffee in the open air 
 ■ — when the Elder Halloway, in riding 
 clothes, strolled across the lawn. 
 
 " Well, well. Holly! You here! " said 
 he. " He's letting you knock off toward 
 the end, is he? " 
 
 Hollis suddenly felt everything going
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 27 
 
 out from under him. Here he was caught 
 red-handed — a traitor. 
 
 " Yes," he said, hastily. " I — you see, 
 I ran this morning." 
 
 " Yes — yes — to be sure. Never thought 
 of that. Sorry wasn't here when you 
 came. Working inside all day — lot of 
 stuff piled up — no day for that sort of 
 thing — had to walk me round a bit — came 
 over here. Fine sunset that was to-night 
 
 — fine — but " The elder man beamed 
 
 on the younger. " Wish I could get up a 
 complexion like yours. No need of walk- 
 in' for you. Just look at him, little sister 
 — doesn't he look fit ? " 
 
 Hollis was laughing. He nodded to- 
 w^ard the lawn and the river where the 
 green of the willows was darkening to 
 black. 
 
 "Don't wonder, do you?" 
 
 " Wonder ! No — don't wonder at any- 
 thing — chap of your age! I saw your 
 three-eighths yesterday " 
 
 " Really," said young Hollis, turning 
 quickly about. " I wasn't — a " 
 
 " Oh, of course, I know. Not letting
 
 28 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 yourself out. I could see that all right. 
 Quite right, too." 
 
 " But you don't see," said Hollis. " I 
 
 was." 
 
 " Oh, no ! No, no, no ! Don't believe 
 that. You were slipping along too easily 
 for that. Gazelle — Empire State — Deer- 
 foot — you remember Deerfoot, the Sha- 
 wanoe — just like that." 
 
 " Well," said Hollis, " I wish " 
 
 " Wish you could have seen yourself? 
 Yes, I know. Bring my camera over Fri- 
 day. Mujt have your picture running. 
 Last race and all that, you know — ' how 
 fine he looks ! ' Of course, a man never 
 knows himself. When he's got his spikes 
 on seems just hard work " 
 
 " Um," assented Hollis, nodding 
 gravely. 
 
 " That's one funny thing about the 
 track. Man's running about half-speed 
 — thinks he's up to his limit. You know 
 how it is. Gets a bit blowed — bet you 
 felt that way going down the third two- 
 twenty — when he's running alone. 
 Thinks he couldn't move up an inch —
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 29 
 
 you know the place, just in front of the 
 Carey steps. Gets in a race and, by jim- 
 iny, goes twice as fast, and never turns 
 a hair. That's the way / was." For so 
 knowing a man this was a strange opti- 
 mism. Holhs smiled in somewhat depre- 
 cating amusement. 
 
 " Alan that held his record for seven 
 years! " said he. 
 
 " Right you are. Oh, yes, I was — real- 
 ly. Always went away down in last 
 two weeks — blue — no — black! 'Way be- 
 low the surface! Went in and by jim- 
 iny, always won ! " The Elder Halloway 
 slapped his knee and laughed aloud. 
 
 " Yes, sir ! Always won ! " 
 
 He prattled on in his disarming way 
 until they pushed back their chairs from 
 the table, and then, dropping a word about 
 taking a look at Miss Halloway's new 
 hunter, he swung down the lawn and dis- 
 appeared behind the hedge of rose-bushes 
 that walled the garden. 
 
 The light went away, and the crickets 
 and katydids awoke, and the great moon 
 climbed up behind the trees across the
 
 30 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 river. Young Hollis pointed that 
 way, 
 
 " It — it just occurs to me," he said, 
 " that I haven't seen one for a month." 
 Miss Halloway laughed Hghtly and 
 watched him. 
 
 " You poor boy," she said, as tender 
 as an elder sister. 
 
 Presently they wandered down on the 
 lawn — the silver lawn — where the senti- 
 nel elms stood in high dignity. There 
 was a bench in the shadow, just at the 
 edge of a circle of light, where a couple of 
 white rabbits were nibbling the wet clover. 
 And there young Hollis and the girl sat 
 down, while the rabbits hopped near to be 
 fed — quaint white bundles in the moon- 
 light, their soft noses damp with dew. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I read that," said Hollis, 
 after a time. " And I've heard him say 
 things like that, too. He's rather proud 
 of speaking about the track, just as you 
 might about a fresh-air park and the 
 things children do there, but he's never 
 lifted a finger to help — he could put up a 
 crack game of tennis if he wanted to. you
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 31 
 
 know — but he can be clever up to the 
 limit making fun of those who do. I 
 suppose he's right, too," smiled the young 
 man, somewhat bitterly, for this was a 
 very serious business for him, and he felt 
 more about it than about anything he had 
 ever been in before. " We aren't big and 
 smooth and fine like the crew, and we 
 aren't brave like the football men. We 
 don't look very impressive in the photo- 
 graphs, and " 
 
 " You talk as though I were a — dear 
 me — a kind of matinee girl," spoke up 
 Miss Halloway, quickly, " or just an out- 
 sider. Don't you know it was my Uncle 
 Jimmy Halloway who ran ? " 
 
 " You're very polite," said Hollis, 
 quietly, *' but you — you cannot under- 
 stand. When you go down to Soldier's 
 Field there's the crowd, and the band, and 
 the real fighting, and when you go to 
 New London, there's the river, and the 
 white yachts, and the big show of it all. 
 And that's what the crowd sees. They 
 don't know what it is to swing down a 
 lane in llie countrv, on an October even-
 
 32 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 ing, with the ground still soft and the 
 frost in the air and the leaves burning, 
 and six miles behind you and four more 
 to go, and the hounds 'way to the front 
 and 'way to the rear, calling ' Tally- 
 ho ! ' They don't know what it is — just 
 the feeling your spikes grip on the cin- 
 ders as you start — there's nothing much 
 in the track that shows " 
 
 "Shows? But that isn't your part. 
 You have the fun. You're there. You're 
 doing it. And if you do it, and do it 
 well, why what else is there!" Hollis 
 turned toward the girl and tried to 
 fathom her eyes. 
 
 " Do you mean that? " he said, almost 
 sternly. " r>o girls feel like that? Do 
 you see our part — my part? " 
 
 The girl turned toward him and 
 laughed, pityingly, yet, gladly, like a 
 brother. Into the mellow night there 
 tinkled an old forgotten song that young 
 HolHs had thumped out night after night 
 on his banjo, and that the chorus used to 
 sing when he and his crowd had front- 
 row seats back in his freshman year.
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 33 
 
 "It's Uncle Jimmy!" whispered the 
 girl, lifting her head to listen, her hands 
 dropping loose on the bench. " I haven't 
 heard him touch a piano in an age ! Dear, 
 dear Uncle Jimmy! " she cried, suddenly. 
 '* I wonder if there are any other Uncle 
 Jimmys ! Any others in all the world ! " 
 Young Hollis glanced at her, then, clasp- 
 ing his hands tightly, looked down at 
 them and at the ground. 
 
 " No," she went on, with a new earnest- 
 ness, yet a bit haltingly, in the way of a 
 young girl talking about things of which 
 she was not supposed to know. " I'd 
 rather do what you do. The eleven is fine, 
 it's more than fine — but it's a game, and 
 you might win by luck, or a trick even. 
 You can't do that. And the crew — you 
 understand, I had a brother who rowed, 
 so it isn't as though I didn't know — 
 there are others to help you. And if you 
 rowed prettily — that is. just rowed pretti- 
 ly, but didn't pull hard — you see I — I 
 knew it to happen once. He rowed num- 
 ber two, and nobody knew about him but 
 the man behind him — the man at bow.
 
 34 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 It wasn't nice. They won, you see, and 
 the man at two didn't pull. And nobody 
 on shore knew — he rowed so well. But 
 you, don't you see " — she turned full on 
 him her fresh face, all life — " what you 
 do you do all yourself, without any luck 
 or any help, and if you win, why what 
 you did, and what you planned, and what 
 you felt — and all of it — it's yours ! " 
 
 " I didn't know," began Hollis, falter- 
 ingly, " I didn't know that girls ever felt 
 that way — " She turned her head away 
 from him, looking off over the silver 
 grass. 
 
 "And you'll — be there?" he asked. 
 She laughed a little, very low. 
 
 " What a lot you've got to learn about 
 girls ! " she said. 
 
 Young Hollis slept that night in a 
 great still room that smelled of all things 
 sweet and clean and cool. Vaguely he re- 
 called, as he slipped away to sleep with 
 the night-breeze fanning the curtains, a 
 stuffy smell of straw matting, a path of 
 light flickering on the white ceiling, the 
 rising whirr of trolley-cars and their
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 35 
 
 clumpety-clnmp as they crossed the 
 Square. All outside was the silver night, 
 all inside the coolness and quiet, and 
 somewhere under the same roof the girl 
 — whose heart would be leaping upward 
 with his as he fought toward the finish 
 line — was sleeping. 
 
 There was tea and things for everybody 
 up in Hollis's rooms after the games. 
 Everybody was there. 
 
 Over by the open window, looking 
 down at the younger Miss Halloway, 
 stood young Hollis — a bit pale and drawn 
 and shaky, but keyed high and exultantly 
 dazed, as became one who had gone stale 
 before a race and then beaten even time, 
 run the second man off his feet and into 
 a faint, and walked from the field with- 
 out anybody's help. 
 
 " And then you didn't see me waving 
 at oil! " It was the vivacious Miss Ban- 
 nerly who insisted on being heard. 
 " Why, it's the same one I carried last 
 year at New London, and I knew it
 
 36 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 couldn't lose! And they had to pull me 
 down — just drag me back into my seat 
 — just snuff me out — and you didn't see." 
 
 "No," said Hollis, plaintively, "I didn't 
 see anybody. You know when " 
 
 "I know that you're just a brute! 
 They aren't all that way. Don't I know 
 that they get to the last turn of the last 
 lap, 'way behind — I saw this in print, so 
 it's true — and then they — I mean he — 
 sees a ribbon — his ribbon — fluttering at 
 him up in the stand — and bang ! Doesn't 
 he just waltz away from them all and 
 win — and — they sit in the window-seat 
 after the race — and live happy ever 
 after!" 
 
 Young Hollis looked very much dis- 
 tressed. 
 
 " But don't you see," he said, " when 
 you're finishing out on what you've got 
 left, and your face is all screwed up in a 
 knot, and there's nothing to breathe, and 
 the track's trying to come up and hit 
 you " 
 
 " Then," Miss Bannerly set the tip of 
 her parasol sharply on the floor, " why
 
 A BREAK IN TRAINING 37 
 
 it's — it's just ' fate on the side of the 
 strongest battaHons,' and girls don't ever 
 help at all." 
 
 Everybody was laughing straight at 
 Hollis. The Elder Halloway turned that 
 way. 
 
 " Quite right ! " said he, with much 
 composure. He had been leaning with 
 his back to the mantel, pulling his mus- 
 tache quizzically, while his eyes rested on 
 young Hollis and Miss Halloway like 
 those of a benevolent and chastened Me- 
 phistopheles. " Quite right, Miss Ban- 
 nerly. Chivalry is dead. It's muscle and 
 wind that wins races, you know. And 
 that — why, that depends on the trainer. 
 Isn't that right, Holly ? Race all depends 
 on the trainer ! " 
 
 Young Mr. Hollis looked at the Elder 
 Halloway very hard. He must have 
 thought of something which had not oc- 
 curred to him before, for he started just 
 a bit and got very pink. 
 
 "Jimmy — Halloway," he said, slowly; 
 and then suddenly going over to the elder 
 man he threw an arm about his shoulder,
 
 38 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 and wrung his hand for all he was worth. 
 Then he turned, apologetically, " Yes, 
 yes — of course, Miss Bannerly, it all de- 
 pends on the trainer."
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 
 
 TRAVIS sat in a big leather chair by 
 the Triglyph fireplace nibbling sugar 
 wafers and sipping Russian tea. The wa- 
 fers took away his appetite, and he didn't 
 like the tea, but his friends believed that 
 he could preserve an unmoved and even 
 effete exterior in the most violent emo- 
 tional crisis, and he was determined to 
 maintain his reputation at all hazards. 
 Outside it was a dazzling February after- 
 noon. The track men were running on 
 the board oval behind the gymnasium; 
 tlie baseball men were sliding on real dirt 
 in the cage; the crew candidates were 
 swinging, bare-backed, over the rowing 
 machines, and there was skating on Spy 
 Pond. 
 
 " We are trained to the hour." an- 
 nounced Travis, tapping the air decisively 
 with his teaspoon. " We are fit for the 
 
 41
 
 42 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 fight of our lives, and. as the piigihsts 
 say, we are bound to win." 
 
 The struggle thus referred to by Travis 
 was a team-race in which the four young 
 men from St. David's were entered to run 
 at the invitation games at ^Mechanics' Hall 
 that night. The race was one of the 
 usual number of special team-races of 
 a winter meet, and, with the genial pur- 
 pose of exciting rivalry, had been ar- 
 ranged for teams, each one of which was 
 to be made up of graduates of some one 
 school of the preparatory class. Travis 
 read this in the papers one day and was 
 immediately seized with an idea. He 
 gathered forthwith three of his friends — 
 Randall, Craigie, and Smith-Robinson — 
 and declared to them that this was a great 
 chance for the St. David's men to show 
 what they were made of, and for each 
 of them, individually, to prove that he 
 had some stuff in him. 
 
 " We've been here now for nearly four 
 years," Travis had said, " and nobody 
 ever heard of a St. David's man going 
 in for anything yet. We've been butter-
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 43 
 
 flies long enough, and we've got to get 
 out and do something. We've got to 
 show 'em we're athletes, I tell you, and 
 — and all that sort of thing. Nowadays 
 if a man can't do something — can't show 
 he's got the stuff — why, I was talking 
 with a girl last night and she said — you 
 know Teddy Bellairs' sister " 
 
 " Oh ! " smiled Randall. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Craigie. 
 
 "Miss Bellairs!" whistled Smith-Rob- 
 inson, wagging his head. 
 
 The three young men from St. David's 
 had been completely mystified to hear 
 such unusual sentiments issue from the 
 mouth of the effete Travis. They knew 
 all about the incomparable Miss Bellairs 
 and her cupboard full of golf cups, and all 
 the rest of it, and now they thought they 
 understood. Travis repeated what this 
 gifted young woman had said to him and 
 branched out into the benefits to be de- 
 rived from manly sports, and how their 
 discipline fitted one for the sterner strug- 
 gles of what the English Department calls 
 the outside world.
 
 44 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 " What we need in this country," de- 
 clared Travis, " is men of iron. Next 
 year we'll be among 'em. And, if we 
 don't go in for something pretty quickly, 
 don't see how we'll ever qualify to — to 
 direct great enterprises, and all that sort 
 of thing, and be — well, by dammy, cap- 
 tains of industry and men of to-morrow !" 
 
 Travis's speech was received with the 
 enthusiasm which his three followers al- 
 ways bestowed on every manifestation 
 of his genius, and it was decided, at once 
 and unanimously, that St. David's should 
 put a team in the field. As only a week 
 remained before the night of the games, 
 it was thought inadvisable to enter on any 
 strict regime training. Besides, as Travis 
 explained, sport was fast ceasing to be 
 sport in this country because of the un- 
 seemly zeal for mere winning which domi- 
 nated it, and such methods as going to 
 bed at ridiculous hours, eating food one 
 didn't like, and being put through one's 
 paces on a track each day by a trainer 
 were commercial and vulgar. All three 
 of Travis's team-mates applauded these
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 45 
 
 sentiments, and as a first step in their 
 preparation for the race the four young 
 men enveloped themselves in their long 
 ulsters, and, strolling over to the board 
 oval behind the gymnasium — a region to 
 which they had never penetrated before — 
 they stood in a group at the side of the 
 track and studied carefully the appearance 
 and motions of the runners who were 
 striding along bare-legged in the frosty 
 air. ]Most of them looked so queer that 
 the St. David's team felt very much en- 
 couraged, and it was with great delight 
 and confidence that they went off to buy 
 their running clothes and spiked shoes. 
 On the advice of Travis, who had read in 
 a book of training, which he had procured 
 at the library that afternoon, that one's 
 preparatory work should be taken as near 
 as possible at the time at which one was 
 going to race, they decided to do their 
 running in the evening. This had two 
 advantages : There was nobody about to 
 embarrass them, and in the dark one 
 seems to be running about three times as 
 fast as one is going actually, which light-
 
 46 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 ens the fatigue of training and is very- 
 stimulating. So rapidly did the team im- 
 prove that after five evenings of work 
 Travis said that he thought they had 
 rounded into form and that on the next 
 evening, the last before the games, they 
 would perfect themselves in starts — which 
 he had understood were often the decid- 
 ing factor in a race — and would run 
 through their distance at top speed to give 
 them a fighting edge. This was done 
 with great success and satisfaction to all 
 concerned, and on the following after- 
 noon, after a morning of complete rest, 
 the St. David's team found themselves in 
 the situation indicated in a few sentences 
 back, receiving their final instructions and 
 watching their captain trifle with his tea. 
 
 Having arranged that the team should 
 meet at Mechanics' Hall at 9:15 o'clock 
 at the latest — the race being called for 
 9 130 — Travis slipped on his ulster and, 
 thrusting his hands deep into its pockets 
 and assuming an air of impenetrable 
 gloom, sauntered over to his room. 
 
 " Dammy ! " he said, " I'm all of a flut^
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 47 
 
 ter, I am! Never was so excited in my 
 life ! " And crouching on the carpet, he 
 began to practice starts between the win- 
 dow-seat and the bedroom door — a di- 
 version which, as the room was only about 
 fifteen feet wide, was less practical than 
 hazardous. He had just come up — 
 bang! — against the opposite wall after 
 one of these plunges, when his door, 
 which was never locked, opened tenta- 
 tively, and the astonished face of an 
 A. D. T. messenger boy peered in. The 
 note which the boy removed carefully 
 from the inside lining of his cap was 
 from that austere matron, Mrs. Beacon- 
 Jones, who knew Travis's family very 
 well indeed, and who thought him such 
 an agreeable youth that she was for- 
 ever inviting him. on the briefest no- 
 tice, to fill up a vacant place at din- 
 ner. Travis was sufficiently used to 
 invitations of this sort to open and be- 
 gin to read the message with his accus- 
 tomed calm — a condition of the emotions 
 which, as may be imagined, was com- 
 pletely o\-erturned when his eye fell on
 
 48 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 the name of the beautiful Miss Bellairs, 
 It appeared that Mrs. Beacon-Jones had 
 spent the week-end at The Oaks and 
 brought Miss Behairs back to town with 
 her; but she was to return in the morn- 
 ing, and wouldn't Mr. Travis like to come 
 in to dinner — quite informally, just 
 among ourselves, and all that. 
 
 " Dammy ! Well, now, I say ! " mur- 
 mured Travis. " What's to do ! " Not 
 wishing the messenger boy to witness his 
 agitation, he told that shivering youth to 
 make himself comfortable in the big chair 
 by the grate, and he then sat down at his 
 desk to compose a note. It would be 
 flying in the face of fate to decline such 
 an invitation, and, besides, as Travis sud- 
 denly recalled with much satisfaction, his 
 friend, Ricketts, who had spent a year at 
 Oxford, had told him that over there a 
 man always went to a garden party be- 
 fore he jumped into his running clothes 
 or got ready to row on the river. 
 
 " The only trouble," mused Travis, " is 
 the dinner. I shall eat too much, and 
 anyway we wouldn't get through until
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 49 
 
 nine o'clock, and I don't quite see how I 
 can feel very keen for racing only half 
 an hour after! " 
 
 After a minute's thought, however, 
 Travis seized his pen and rapidly wrote 
 two notes. One of them was addressed 
 to a certain ticket agency, where Travis 
 was well known, reserving three seats 
 at the Hollis for that evening. In the 
 other Travis accepted Mrs. Beacon- 
 Jones's invitation with enthusiasm, and 
 informed her that, as he had heard Miss 
 Bellairs speak inquiringly of the " Jump- 
 ing-Jack Girl," he was going to retaliate 
 for being asked to dinner on such short 
 notice by inviting them to go to the the- 
 ater afterward. Travis added that they 
 must surely not miss Lola Lane's song 
 about " My Congo Waterlily," which 
 came near the beginning of the first act, 
 because, so everyone said, that was quite 
 the best thing in the piece. 
 
 " I think," observed Travis with satis- 
 faction, " that that will do very well. In 
 order to reach the theater we shall have 
 to dine very early, and I shall have such
 
 50 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 an extremely good time that I shall for- 
 get all about worrying over the race. And 
 what is best of all, I shall very distinctly 
 have it on the other three." 
 
 Travis was far too much in awe of 
 Miss Bellairs's personal prowess to risk 
 any mention of his own venture until he 
 felt that his status as an athlete was defi- 
 nitely established, and from the easy prat- 
 tle with which he beguiled the dinner hour 
 and the ride downtown no one would 
 have suspected that in somewhat less than 
 two hours he was to appear in running 
 clothes and spiked shoes for the first time 
 before any audience. On arriving at the 
 theater he left his guests for a moment in 
 the foyer while he stepped to the ticket 
 office and wrote a note, which he asked 
 should be delivered promptly at the close 
 of the first act to ** Mr. Travis, who was 
 to sit in E3, but had not yet reached his 
 seat." He then rejoined Miss Bellairs, 
 and the party arrived at their stalls in the 
 fifth row on the aisle just as the merry 
 villagers of the royal city of Bezing Be- 
 zazza fluttered in from the wings to sing
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 51 
 
 the entrance song for the MilHonaire and 
 the Sixteen MilHners, who had been cast 
 away on their lonely island. The first 
 act was short and a great success, the 
 " Congo Waterlily Song " had been en- 
 cored four times, and sung to red, yel- 
 low, purple, and variegated lights and in 
 pitch darkness. The curtain was just go- 
 ins: down when an usher came down the 
 aisle and handed Travis a note. After 
 reading it through he explained, with ex- 
 treme politeness and concern, that he 
 would have to leave them for a few min- 
 utes, but that his friend, Dunster, whom 
 he saw sitting in the front row, would, 
 he knew, be delighted to take his place 
 while he was gone. Dunster was a harm- 
 less young man who was known both to 
 Mrs. Beacon-Jones and Miss Bellairs, 
 and who happened to regard Travis in 
 the light of a hero. " What's up ! " he 
 whispered, when Travis had made his 
 request. 
 
 " Nothing," sighed Travis wearily, 
 running his fingers tentatively over his 
 tie. " Little team-race on, down at Me-
 
 52 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 chanics' Hall — got to run. Be back in 
 an hour." 
 
 Duiister gasped and regarded Travis 
 with kindling eyes. 
 
 " You don't care what you do, do 
 you?" he murmured. 
 
 " If anything should happen! " mused 
 Travis. " Of course, there won't, but if 
 anything should, you know, just see that 
 they get home, and all that, won't you, 
 old fellow?" 
 
 Poor young Dunster was so unnerved 
 by this Olympic dismissal of the austere 
 Mrs. Beacon-Jones and the incomparable 
 Miss Bellairs that no sooner had he sat 
 down beside them than he forgot all about 
 Travis's request not to say anything about 
 the race, and straightway blurted it all 
 out with exuberant comments on Travis's 
 genius. 
 
 " Never was such a man ! " cried young 
 Dunster. " You see how it is — some- 
 body's given out up there — or broke a leg 
 or something — and they had to send for 
 Travis. He's the man they had to have 
 — only one that would do. Here he is in
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 53 
 
 the theater; nothing further from his 
 mind than running — he never trains or 
 anything hke that, you know — note comes 
 telHng him to come quick ; gets up, says 
 nothing, saunters out, and I bet you," 
 cried young Dunster to the sympathetic 
 Miss Bellairs, " I bet you he goes up there 
 and beats 'em all out, and '11 be back here 
 in an hour without turning a hair ! " 
 
 Young Dunster worked himself up to 
 such a pitch of enthusiasm, and Miss Bel- 
 lairs was so impressed with the noble self- 
 sacrifice exhibited by Travis in leaving 
 her in order, so to speak, to do his duty 
 as a man, and so excited on her sport- 
 ing side by the news that the effete Mr. 
 Travis was an athlete beneath his purple 
 and fine linen, that when Dunster, in a 
 sudden burst of executive ability, pro- 
 posed that they should leave the play, 
 jump into a carriage, and rush with all 
 speed to the scene of action. Miss Bel- 
 lairs replied that they would be rank quit- 
 ters if they didn't, and even Mrs. Beacon- 
 Jones acquiesced and said that she really 
 believed she would like to go.
 
 54 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Travis reached the contestants' room in 
 the basement of Mechanics' Hall at 9 125 
 o'clock. The place was crowded with 
 men in all stages of undress, and stifling 
 with the heat from the steam pipes and 
 the mingled smells of sweaty clothes and 
 liniment and wintergreen oil. Some of 
 the runners were stretched on the padded 
 benches, taking their rubbing gratefully; 
 others were nervously tying quadruple 
 knots in the laces of their running shoes ; 
 freshmen were having their numbers 
 pinned to the backs of their shirts with 
 conscious pride, and the bald-headed vet- 
 eran from the Jolly Pathfinders' Athletic 
 Club of South Boston, who had already 
 contested in the shot-put, the mile run, 
 and the handicap-half, was now, with 
 four rubbers in magenta and yellow 
 sweaters, and one boy with a mysterious 
 black bottle, preparing himself for the 
 fifty-yard dash. Into the humid heat of 
 this cheerful and extraordinary place 
 there came, every now and then, the 
 megaphone voice from the stairway as 
 the coming events were called ; up the
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 55 
 
 Stairs hurried the fresh runners, down 
 them toppled the sick-looking ones, and 
 steadily from the great hall overhead 
 came the muffled booming of the band and 
 the stage-thunder rumble of feet tearing 
 around the banked and boarded track. 
 
 " Where the deuce have you been ! " 
 demanded Randall. " Five minutes more 
 and we should have had to run w^ithout 
 you ! " Travis, picking his way circum- 
 spectly between the files of sw'eaters and 
 littered clothing, slipped off his outer coat 
 and dropped it across an empty bench — 
 revealing to the startled gaze of the sturdy 
 runners from the Thistle Harriers, who 
 occupied quarters adjoining, an evening 
 costume whose chaste splendor threw 
 those gentlemen into amazement and 
 dismay. 
 
 " Dined out ! " smiled Travis, adding 
 a coat and w-aistcoat to the pile. 
 "Thought I'd never get away!" By 
 the time Randall had recovered from the 
 shock of this announcement sufficiently 
 to communicate it to the dumbfounded 
 members of the vSt. David's team the
 
 56 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 megaphone was already bellowing from 
 the stairs the first call for their race. At 
 the same moment Travis, wrapped in a 
 dressing gown which, with his running 
 clothes, he had left at the hall on his way 
 into town that evening, appeared and 
 suggested that it was about time they 
 were getting upstairs. 
 
 The great hall was crowded with spec- 
 tators and ablaze with lights, and as they 
 stepped, blinking, into the arena, Larry 
 Devine, the East Somerville Wonder, was 
 just finishing an exhibition quarter-mile 
 to the tune of " The Wearing of the 
 Green." Rows of eager spectators banked 
 three sides of the big hall and crowded 
 the balcony, and as the band stopped and 
 they became the focus of a vast compos- 
 ite stare, the four novice members of the 
 St. David's team felt very much, as 
 Smith-Robinson confided to Randall, like 
 entries in the poodle class approaching 
 the judges for the preliminary round of 
 judging. The light-footed Mercuries 
 who represented Duxbury High, Cam- 
 bridgeport Collegiate, and East Chelsea
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 57 
 
 Latin lost no time in soliloquizing, but 
 promptly began to act as though they 
 had been there many times before. Toss- 
 ing their blankets and robes aside they 
 trotted out on the track, and in the man- 
 ner affected by the sophisticated strode 
 solemnly around on the tips of their toes, 
 to get the feel of the going and of the 
 steeply banked corners. The three lesser 
 members of the St. David's team fol- 
 lowed their lead, but Travis, with his 
 thumbs in the cord of his gown, stared at 
 the ceiling, buried in thought, only now 
 and then casting his eyes toward his 
 prancing opponents with the air of one 
 picking flaws in their style or weak points 
 toward which to direct an attack. 
 
 " Better try the corners ! " cried Ran- 
 dall, putting his mouth close to Travis's 
 ear to make himself heard through the 
 resumed dinning of the band. He jerked 
 his head toward the fan-shaped wdiite pine 
 inclines that curved at an angle of nearly 
 forty-five degrees round each corner of 
 the track. 
 
 "Aren't you going to try the corners?"
 
 58 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 stuttered Smith-Robinson. He was to 
 run the first relay, and he was pale and 
 quite unstrung. 
 
 All at once the noise of the band was 
 hushed and the big hall became still. The 
 starter's whistle squealed, and the first 
 four runners — Smith-Robinson, and the 
 three unknown quantities from Duxbury 
 High, Cambridgeport Collegiate, and 
 East Chelsea Latin took their places at 
 the starting line. This line was in front 
 of the main entrance to the hall, and they 
 were to run three laps in each relay, fin- 
 ishing where they ha.d begun. Smith- 
 Robinson was lucky enough to draw the 
 pole. Craigie, as they had arranged over 
 the tea and wafers that afternoon, was to 
 run the second relay, Randall the third, 
 and Travis, as became the originator of 
 the St. David's team, had the honor of 
 fighting out the finish. 
 
 " Ready! " said the starter. " Set! " 
 Now, Smith-Robinson was extremely 
 nervous, and as he had never run before, 
 he knew nothing about the penalty im- 
 posed for starting ahead of time, and he
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 59 
 
 feared nothing. And so it came about 
 that when the starter had slowly knelled 
 out the " Set! " he could contain himself 
 no longer, and over the line he shot, like 
 a rabbit out of a grass-tuft, beating the 
 pistol by precisely the permissible fraction 
 of a second and causing all the veteran 
 sporting gentlemen in the hall to wag 
 their heads with delight and wonder, and 
 observe that that young feller couldn't 'a' 
 caught it better if he'd a been Duffey him- 
 self. The result was that Smith-Robinson 
 found himself, after the mad jostling at 
 the first turn, in the lead, a position which 
 so terrified him with its responsibility 
 that, in sheer fear that the three men 
 who were puffing behind him should pass 
 him, he ran with a speed that no one, least 
 of all himself, had ever dreamed that he 
 possessed. 
 
 Br-r-r-r — thrump — thrump — thrump 
 — Br-r-r-r! went the spiked feet down the 
 long side, over the resounding banked 
 corners and on again. It takes pretty 
 good running to pass a man who has the 
 pole, on the short sides and ugly corners
 
 6o A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 of an indoor track, and on Smith-Robin- 
 son flew, as though pursued by the Head- 
 less Horseman — around two laps, on 
 through the third, down the long side, and 
 all out and wobbling, with the three others 
 trailing Indian-file behind him, he dived 
 forward and touched Craigie's frantic 
 fingers only a fraction of a second behind 
 the veteran runner for Cambridgeport 
 Collegiate. 
 
 " Two of 'em behind you ! " cried Trav- 
 is, slapping Craigie on the back, as he 
 jumped away. " We're still ahead ! " 
 
 Craigie was the least likely man on 
 the St. David's team, but in the instant 
 that elasped before the second runner for 
 East Chelsea Latin — a grim-looking gen- 
 tleman, somewhat bald, in a green jersey 
 with a broad purple band about the mid- 
 dle of it which gave, as one might say, a 
 touch of color to the scene — before this 
 runner could reach the hand of his own 
 man, Craigie was safely away in pursuit 
 of Cambridgeport Collegiate. The grim- 
 looking gentleman was, however, not to 
 be denied. At the end of the first lap he
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 6i 
 
 was on even terms with Craigie. Bump- 
 ing elbows, neck and neck, they fought 
 round the second lap, then the purple 
 and green slipped by and in the die-away 
 of the last lap Craigie just managed to 
 beat out Duxbury High for third place. 
 
 " Up guards and at 'em ! " yelled Trav- 
 is, as Randall slapped Craigie's hand. 
 " There's one behind us ! We're still 
 ahead ! " 
 
 Br-r-r-r-r — thrump — thrump — thrump 
 — Br-r-r-r! went the helter-skelter of 
 pounding feet. Travis, his robe thrown 
 aside, his fingers working nervously, 
 watched the flight and pursuit, and tried 
 to keep his heart inside his ribs until it 
 came his turn. He had seen some track 
 games once, but he had never seen any- 
 thing like this — the sink-or-swim, head- 
 long, thundering pace, dying away with 
 each runner only to be caught up and 
 whirled on again — the yells and the smell 
 of heat and gas and the drum-beat roll 
 on the pine boards — this composite re- 
 duction of a prize-fight and a pony express 
 with a band booming away in the gallery.
 
 62 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Round they came toward the last lap of 
 the third relay— " St. David's ! " yelled 
 Travis, as they pounded by, Randall and 
 the Duxbury man neck and neck — and 
 then vv^ith the three others he jumped into 
 his place on the starting line. It was a 
 moment calculated to agitate even the 
 most imperturbable heart. Craigie and 
 Smith-Robinson lay prone at the side of 
 the track. Travis's turn came next, and 
 with half a lap yet to go he could see that 
 Randall was weakening. Slowly the four 
 drew nearer. Travis, leaning back as far 
 as he could from the line, stretched an 
 arm toward Randall and called to him: 
 " Come 071 ! Come on! " The band was 
 booming triumphantly " Hands Across 
 the Sea." On the runners came, in close 
 single file now, Cambridgeport Collegiate 
 in the lead. There was a moment's sud- 
 den wait as they struggled round the last 
 
 turn, then 
 
 Clang! went the gong for the last lap. 
 A runner beside Travis jumped away — a 
 second — a third — then a damp hand 
 touched his and — he was off! '
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 63 
 
 Clang-clang-clang ! rang the nervous 
 gong. A yell of joy went up from the 
 crowd and the band jumped into the dou- 
 ble-quick. Travis was round the first 
 turn before he even found himself. It 
 was now or never for the gentlemen from 
 St. David's — three men ahead and Travis 
 to the rescue. Down the long side he 
 fairly flew. Not having gotten the feel 
 of his legs, nor of the track, the hard floor 
 seemed to rebound against his feet. He 
 could not have stopped any more than if 
 he had been running on glary ice. The 
 steeply inclined corner reared in front of 
 him. Instinctively leaning inward, he 
 took it blindly — the pine boards suddenly 
 slapped him a staggering blow in the 
 face, and he was sliding foolishly up and 
 along the incline with ten thousand slivers 
 at once rushing into his knees. Travis 
 didn't know, of course, that a fall at the 
 first corner is the novice's proverbial fate, 
 and to the indoor audience one of its live- 
 liest delights, and as the crowd yelled and 
 the three other men pounded away and 
 he scrambled to his feet, he was very
 
 64 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 certain that the light had all gone out of 
 his life and he would never be the same 
 man again. Beaten as he was, he was 
 bound to finish game, however, and be- 
 fore he really knew that the galleries 
 hadn't collapsed or that there hadn't been 
 a subway explosion, he was up and after 
 them. It seemed seconds, but as a mat- 
 ter of fact he had shot forward, slid 
 twenty feet across the boards, gathered 
 his feet under him and jumped after the 
 leaders so quickly that the whole thing 
 looked like some sort of curious manoeu- 
 ver in the race. He could hear the people 
 cheering him and see handkerchiefs wav- 
 ing over the rail and feel the air blow 
 cold against the raw flesh of his knees as 
 he got into his gait again. 
 
 " Keep it up ! Keep it up ! " the crowd 
 roared. "Yay, yay! Good boy! You're 
 all right ! Go it, young feller ! " 
 
 On down the long side and past the 
 starting line, where Craigie and Randall 
 and Smith-Robinson, raised on their el- 
 bows, were staring at him in despair, on 
 around the second lap he fought, with
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 65 
 
 the distance between him and the leaders 
 remaining the same. 
 
 Clang! went the gong for the last lap. 
 The band began to play so fast that it 
 ran away from the tune, and the latter, 
 in despair, so to speak, stumbled and 
 twisted itself into a knot. Casting reck- 
 lessly into the running the last ounce of 
 steam they had, the four runners fought 
 up the long side of the hall, across and 
 down the other side. Travis several 
 yards behind, began to " climb stairs." 
 Randall, Craigie, and Smith-Robinson 
 hobbled up the side of the track calling 
 on him to come, and the three leaders, 
 close together, all out and wobbling, but 
 not to be overtaken, hit the last corner, 
 when — 
 
 " Just like that ! " cried young Dun- 
 ster, bringing his hands together with a 
 clap, as he described the incident after- /. 
 
 ward. " Down goes the first man just 
 as though you'd knocked his legs from 
 under him. Two men right behind him — 
 all out — dead to the world — Travis had 
 run 'em off their feet, you know — won- 
 
 ;x
 
 66 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 derful man, Travis — wonderful endur- 
 ance, wind, and all that, you know — 
 down they go, too ! All in a heap — can't 
 get out of the way! Travis just misses 
 'em — wonderful quickness, presence of 
 mind, and all that, you know. Hurdles 
 back man — swings out — dives ahead and 
 hits the tape ! " 
 
 It was at the psychological instant thus 
 vividly pictured — just as Travis stag- 
 gered past his prostrate opponents — that 
 young Dunster and his convoy entered 
 the hall and started down the main aisle, 
 which gave an unobstructed view of the 
 finish. And as Travis hit the tape he 
 fell squarely into the arms of young Dun- 
 ster, who, in spite of the long ulster in 
 which he was enveloped, and a policeman, 
 had vaulted the rail and now, with one 
 arm supporting Travis, pointed in tri- 
 umph behind him where stood Mrs. Bea- 
 con-Jones and the incomparable Miss Bel- 
 lairs. 
 
 With a rare stroke of genius Travis 
 permitted his gaze to fall lightly on Miss 
 Bellairs, and then to pass on as though
 
 BETWEEN THE ACTS 67 
 
 she were but a picture on the wall. Miss 
 Bellairs beheld this, saw Travis hurry the 
 reviving members of his team off to the 
 dressing-room, and when he returned a 
 few moments later, faultlessly arrayed 
 and apparently quite unruffled, there came 
 through her look of critical admiration a 
 flutter of deference and submission. 
 
 " To think," she murmured, half aloud, 
 " how I have misjudged him! " 
 
 *' Just telling them," breezed Dunster, 
 as the four members of St. David's team 
 came up. " how you go in for these things 
 without any training or any of that sort 
 of bother, you know, and " 
 
 " Yes — yes, that will be all right," 
 smiled Travis reassuringly. " But I 
 promised that I would be back by the 
 third act, you know, and it's only ten 
 o'clock now, and that thing is monstrous- 
 ly long and — and, I say we all go back 
 together." 
 
 " You see," he said, turning toward 
 Miss Bellairs and starting toward the 
 door, " it's in the last act that that " 
 
 The rest of it was not heard, because
 
 68 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Travis and Miss Bellairs swept calmly 
 away as though there was nobody else in 
 the world. Young Dunster and Mrs. 
 Beacon-Jones followed, the latter observ- 
 ing that this sport seemed quite as dan- 
 gerous as football, and that she did not 
 see why it was necessary for Mr. Travis 
 to knock all those young men down. The 
 three lesser members of the St. David's 
 team brought up the rear. 
 
 " This thing mixes me all up," said 
 Smith-Robinson. " Certainly it is most 
 extraordinary! My man beats me out 
 on the first lap, your green-and-purple 
 sweater chap makes it worse in the sec- 
 ond, Randall finishes last in the third, 
 Travis falls down and loses the whole 
 race, and yet St. David's team beats 'em 
 all and we get the cups, and you'll read 
 that we won in to-morrow morning's pa- 
 pers. It mixes me all up, and what I 
 want to know is, are we athletes and all 
 that now, or aren't we — that's what I 
 want to know ! "
 
 HIS FIRST RACE
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 
 
 THE Freshman was a boy who could 
 have done some things very excel- 
 lently, if he had not been too bashful to 
 do his best. In crises he was likely to 
 come out strong, but that was because he 
 forgot himself. He had lots of sand and 
 seriousness and endurance as long as he 
 worked down in the crowd ; then when he 
 found himself on top, with people staring 
 at him and expecting things, he got 
 frightened and ran away. One who is 
 chosen for the team, however, may not 
 run away. With none to help or shield 
 him he must start from the mark, and, 
 on his own legs, with none but his own 
 strength of will, win, or run until he 
 drops. This last merely shows that he 
 has the right spirit. 
 
 Now, the Freshman had a perfectly 
 healthy body and very i)rettily shaped 
 
 71
 
 72 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 muscles, but joined to these a set of 
 nerves that hung Hke hair-triggers. Be- 
 cause of this, he felt and was hurt by- 
 many things which had no reason to hurt 
 him, and never touched other people. Be- 
 cause of this, the week which had passed 
 since he had read in the 'varsity daily his 
 name among the entries had been a night- 
 mare, in which all the outside world 
 seemed leagued in a plot to disgrace him. 
 Because of this, every time the cheers or 
 the starter's shrill whistle came to him 
 where he lay wrapped in sweater and 
 blankets on the floor of the locker-room, 
 or he saw the runners drag themselves 
 in from the last race to fall on the floor 
 in a heap, or caught the warm, rank 
 smell of liniment and witch-hazel which 
 weighted the air of the room, he cringed 
 and pressed his hot, sweaty hands be- 
 tween his knees. 
 
 The Freshman stepped out on the 
 track as a nervous horse steps on a shaky 
 bridge. The white figures of the others 
 in his event, the half-mile, were already 
 there, slowly trotting for a few rods down
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 73 
 
 the track, careful, business-like, and self- 
 possessed, as though they really believed 
 it did some good. With long, springy, 
 limbering strides, the Freshman followed. 
 He held his eyes away from the great 
 wall of crowded " bleachers," as you 
 would keep your eyes fixed upward when 
 climbing a precipice. The big, moving, 
 many-colored mass said nothing, but it 
 had a silent stare, the sum of hundreds 
 of watching eyes, which was awful. 
 After a dozen steps he turned and walked 
 slowly back. Even that had made his 
 breath come quicker, and he tried to cal- 
 culate how far he could go before his 
 wind would give out and the wretched 
 hollow feeling would overcome him. He 
 fancied he might get as far as the first 
 quarter. 
 
 In front of him the starting line tape 
 was drawn across the black cinders. He 
 drew near it with a shivery feeling. He 
 was not a coward. But there was some- 
 thing so new and untried and relentless 
 in it all. There was no luck, no escape. 
 In two minutes he must cross it, either
 
 74 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 ahead, or with only enough strength left 
 to drop gracefully. The great crowd, a 
 blank of black with splashes here and 
 there of white and blue and pink, stared 
 down gayly and whispered all over, like 
 great trees rustling in the breeze. It was 
 fun for the crowd, sitting in its summer 
 clothes in comfortable seats; it used to 
 be fun, the Freshman recalled, for an- 
 ■ other crowd, to sit beneath the silken 
 awnings and turn down its thumbs to the 
 gladiators below. Getting used to all 
 this strain, and learning how to run one's 
 self to a standstill, is what wins races. 
 Many grow to like it. The Freshman, 
 however, was running his first race, and 
 he looked at the crowd and the mark as 
 you might at the glittering surgical in- 
 struments and the rows of eager-faced 
 medical students waiting to see your leg 
 cut off. 
 
 The eight figures stood waiting. A 
 clerk-like young man, with book and pen- 
 cil, examined the number on each man's 
 back. 
 
 " All right," said he, stepping aside.
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 75 
 
 Then a sharp-eyed fellow stepped for- 
 ward with a little nickel-plated pistol in 
 his hand. 
 
 " Ready, in your places," he said, 
 sternly. 
 
 The Freshman had the outside. He 
 felt a dim gladness. Not so much would 
 be expected of him. Next him was a 
 blue jersey, and so on alternately. The 
 crimson veteran was next to the pole. 
 
 " On your marks," commanded the 
 sharp-eyed man. Each runner glanced 
 at the toe of his shoe to see that it touched 
 the line. 
 
 " Ready! "—" Set! " Two of the blue 
 jerseys crouched to the ground with arms 
 stiffened straight and thumb and finger 
 just touching the tape. The Freshman 
 leaned forward and squeezed his sweaty 
 fingers tighter. His mouth was like cot- 
 ton. He listened for the shot behind 
 him, as though the pistol were loaded and 
 pointed at his back. Unconsciously he 
 leaned farther and farther forward. 
 There was a quick wabble in his legs, 
 and he sprawled over the line.
 
 76 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 "Come, come, come!" drawled the 
 starter. " This is no fifty-yard dash." 
 And he lowered his pistol. The Fresh- 
 man stepped back, much confused. 
 
 " Now ! On your marks ! " 
 
 Again there was crouching and leaning 
 and stiffening and straining of muscles. 
 
 " Re-eady !— Get set ! " There was a 
 tense, tearing instant; then a short, fool- 
 ish little click. Someone said something 
 between his teeth. The Freshman had 
 sprawled across the line again. The crim- 
 son veteran straightened up and slowly 
 turned his head. He looked much bored. 
 The starter sighed distressedly. He 
 turned a chamber in the revolver. 
 
 " All right ! Now — on your marks ! " 
 "Ready!" Set!" The starter glanced 
 sharply along the rigid line. Then his 
 arm w^nt up above his head. There was 
 a snap, a quick scattering of cinders, a 
 leaping of muscles into life, and the 
 Freshman felt himself falling through 
 bottomless depths of air. When he came 
 to himself he was a dozen yards down 
 the track, fiercely elbowing for the place
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 77 
 
 next the pole. The first furious moment 
 of pushing and cutting across in front 
 and cutting in behind was over, and, like 
 different sized stones rolling down a steep 
 incline, the runners had shaken them- 
 selves into place. It suddenly occurred 
 to the Freshman that the thing which had 
 hung over his mind like a heavy paining 
 cloud had burst. 
 
 He could not have told why he was try- 
 ing so madly to pass the object at his side, 
 and thus was wasting the strength that 
 should have been saved for his legs. He 
 had no idea of the pace they kept, nor 
 how long he could stand it. The blue 
 jersey merely moved faster, and blind in- 
 stinct urged him ahead. Then he remem- 
 bered that the blue jersey, being on the 
 inside, was running the shorter distance, 
 and that there was a whole half mile 
 ahead of them. There were a great many 
 chances to one that he would have for- 
 gotten this. The Freshman dropped in 
 behind and hooked his glance to the num- 
 ber on the other's back. 
 
 As they passed the first turn, he saw
 
 78 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 the veteran sweeping grandly into the 
 first straightaway, as one sees the loco- 
 motive from a car window when the train 
 rounds a curve. From that steadily ad- 
 vancing white figure, its legs rising and 
 falling with the regularity of pistons, he 
 felt a sort of attraction, as though it drew 
 the others after it. Between the leader 
 and himself were figures, but he did not 
 know how many, or that a blue jersey 
 was second, a crimson band third, then 
 two blue jerseys, and sixth himself. He 
 realized only the inexorable fact that he 
 was in something which could not stop. 
 He fixed his eye on the big black number 
 in front of him, as in the midst of a herd 
 of stampeded cattle you would fix your 
 eye on the animal in front. The rejoic- 
 ing of a strong man at running a race 
 did not occur to him. He felt entirely 
 on the defensive. 
 
 As his mind accustomed itself to the 
 steady, relentless stride, stride, stride, and 
 he began to feel his toes touch the ground 
 and hear the breath rush in and out of 
 his nose, he felt a new difficulty. It grew
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 79 
 
 big and important in his mind. The pace 
 was too fast. 
 
 There is, of course, a speed which no 
 man can keep up for half a mile. It 
 troubled him that the others did not see 
 that they were going at this pace. It 
 seemed foolish and unfair, and he felt 
 like stopping to expostulate. Sometimes, 
 as you stand beside a locomotive, the 
 safety-valve bursts into its fiendishly 
 thunderous rattle. You put your hands 
 to your ears, but it does not stop. You 
 feel like saying to it, " Wait a moment, 
 please, till I am ready, then you may be- 
 gin." Such was the Freshman's state of 
 mind, as with the same sort of irritating 
 effect, the outrageous pace dragged him 
 on. 
 
 Thud — thud — thud — went the feet in 
 front and behind him. He was now just 
 entering the straightaway opposite the 
 grand-stands. He observed that he was 
 keeping stride with the man in front of 
 him. He knew that old runners some- 
 times wear out novices, by thus making 
 them run an unnatural stride, It worried
 
 8o A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 him, but he could not seem to change. 
 His eyes still clung to the number. He 
 studied it nervously. It was 83. Each 
 roughness in the printing, the spots of 
 dust, the threads of the cloth, he exam- 
 ined intently. It occurred to him that 
 it could be easily made into an 88. At the 
 time this seemed more or less significant. 
 
 The thudding crunch of the spikes into 
 the track and the splatter of cinders 
 against his bare legs, which he now began 
 to notice, told him how fast they swept 
 along. Now and then a lump hit his face, 
 and one, swifter than the rest, struck into 
 his eye. It scratched painfully, and he 
 saw the black 83 with but one eye. They 
 were directly across from the stands now, 
 and as they filed rhythmically by there 
 were pleased little " Ohs " which he could 
 not hear. Nor did he notice, except in a 
 confused way, the shouts from the half- 
 dressed figures who, leaning from the 
 balcony and upper windows of the field- 
 house, yelled, " Good work! Hang on " 
 and " Keep it up ! You're all right! " 
 
 A white, flat stone slipped past beside
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 8l 
 
 his feet, and he knew that the 220 mark 
 was passed, and the race was just quarter 
 done. It would take three times the 
 strength he already had used to finish. 
 Just as the dread impossibihty of all this 
 sank on his mind, the blue jersey behind 
 pushed forward. As the Freshman saw 
 it, out of the side of his eye, he in- 
 stinctively quickened his own stride. 
 Then he discovered that his legs, which 
 he had forgotten, lifted very heavily, and 
 his breath came hissingly between his 
 teeth. This meant that he was getting 
 tired. At the same moment the black 83 
 began to move steadily away. What was 
 happening was this — they were just en- 
 tering the straightaway that led past the 
 stands, and the more experienced men 
 were feeling the stimulus of the crowd. 
 As the Freshman saw the number slip 
 from him, saw the wall of spectators 
 looming up ahead, and thought that there 
 was still more than half the distance to 
 run. a cold fear struck him. He doubted 
 tliat he could pass the crowd. He 
 squeezed his fists tighter and bit his lips
 
 82 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 hard. He cast a short, defiant look at the 
 stands, and, lest they see how weak and 
 wabbly he really was, he stepped as 
 straight as though he were running be- 
 tween two barb-wire fences two feet 
 apart. 
 
 The rope fence had broken just as the 
 runners had been sent off, and the crowd 
 had pushed out on the track. With cries 
 of " Get back ! Get back ! Give 'em a 
 show!" the mass opened into a narrow 
 lane, through which the racers tramped 
 single file. With the same ceaseless 
 crunch — crunch, swish — swish, and 
 breath hissing through teeth, they ap- 
 proached the gauntlet of stares. To the 
 Freshman the glimpses of faces and or- 
 dinary clothes seemed far away and ir- 
 relevant, as might appear the trees and 
 shore to one struggling in the water. As 
 he entered the lane, the stares reached out 
 for him, pulled him toward them, and 
 then dismissed him with a shove. 
 
 As he neared the upper end he could 
 see the timers leaning out over the edge 
 of the track, watch in hand. A voice
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 83 
 
 said " fifty-seven " as he passed, and he 
 knew that he had done the first quarter- 
 mile in three seconds less than a minute. 
 Even in his quarter-mile trials he had nev- 
 er done better. There was still another 
 quarter to go. The rashness of the thing- 
 seemed monstrous. He almost smiled at 
 the irony of it. But at that moment, just 
 as they passed the timers, the blue jersey 
 ahead of him sprang away, apparently 
 as fresh as at the start. 
 
 That is what always happens. When 
 the distance is half covered, and the race 
 is merely from one mark to the same 
 mark again, a sort of devil-may-care 
 courage seizes the racers. It is in the lit- 
 tle sprint that follows that the half-mile 
 may be won. The novice is likely to be 
 deceived by this sudden freshness. He 
 does not know that his rival is really as 
 weak and hollow as he himself. The 
 Freshman felt his last ounce of strength 
 leave him. It was only a desperate stub- 
 bornness that made him squeeze his fists 
 and go through the motions of spurting. 
 At the moment he remembered having
 
 84 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 once read, " When you pass the quarter 
 mark you should begin to pick up those 
 ahead of you — if there still remain any." 
 Again he almost smiled at the irony of it 
 all. Faster came the chuck, chuck of 
 spiked feet. They were past the crowd, 
 and rounding the upper turn. More des- 
 perate were the Freshman's struggles to 
 increase his pace ; and, finally, just as they 
 turned into the long side, he felt the prick 
 of cinders against his bare legs. All his 
 strength of will he centered on the black 
 83 in front. It seemed to move forward 
 with the steady relentlessness of the rear 
 platform of a railway car which one is 
 trying to catch. They were now in the 
 middle of the long straightaway that led 
 past the field house. His breath seemed 
 only to touch the top of his lungs before 
 an irresistible pull snatched it back. His 
 legs were growing wooden. He felt that 
 he could last but a moment longer. 
 
 At that instant something took his 
 gaze away from the 83. Just to the 
 right of the blue jersey and slowly fall- 
 ing back toward them, was the crimson-
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 85 
 
 banded runner who had held third place. 
 His stride had so lost its regularity that 
 he had swerved toward the center of the 
 track. His arms, which had moved stiff 
 and steadily at his sides, were doubled 
 up as a child runs, with fists churning in 
 front of his face. His head and upper 
 body pumped, as though he were push- 
 ing himself along. The Freshman was 
 amazed. That one of those others should 
 thus show signs of weakness, while he 
 himself kept his feet, seemed incongru- 
 ous. Then the exhausted runner wab- 
 bled; once his foot struck out sideways, 
 and he was thrown out of his stride. At 
 that moment number 83 passed by. Close 
 upon him, mystified but dogged, the 
 Freshman found himself slowly but 
 steadily slipping past the beaten racer. 
 As he did so the face of things changed. 
 When he snapped his eyes back to the 
 83, there was a new look in them. 
 Before, it had been the stubborn terror 
 of a child ; there was now a suggestion 
 of the eyes of a fox-terrier who stands 
 before a rat-hole with tail bobbing nerv-
 
 86 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 ously and legs trembling with excite- 
 ment. 
 
 It was a big thing which the Fresh- 
 man had learned in the last second, but 
 it did not make new legs, or lungs full of 
 air. They were just passing the three- 
 eighths mark, and he must finish as he 
 was. The same relentless chuck — swish 
 — chuck — swish — beat upon the cinders. 
 The Freshman's legs seemed to have lost 
 all feeling and to rise and fall mechanic- 
 ally, like wooden sticks. Suddenly one 
 of them slipped, just as when someone 
 hits you unexpectedly behind the knee. 
 This meant that he was falling out of his 
 stride, and it frightened him. The breath 
 fell so shallowly into his lungs that he 
 seemed to be seizing it in bites. Once 
 he discovered a fist in front of his face, 
 and he knew then that he, too, was 
 " pumping." Things were getting wavy 
 and hazy before his eyes. He was learn- 
 ing the meaning of the phrase, " running 
 yourself out." It means to run till you 
 are ready to drop, then shut your eyes, 
 squeeze your fists, and sprint!
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 87 
 
 The Freshman did not reaHze, in the 
 excitement of it ah, that he was uncon- 
 sciously increasing his speed at every 
 step. But he saw the 83 come nearer — 
 slowly, maddeningly slow — but steadily 
 nearer. As each dead leg heaved for- 
 ward, and the breath slipped from the 
 grasp of his teeth, he approached inch by 
 inch until he could have touched it with 
 his hand. Then a rash courage came to 
 him. His eyes left the 83 ; he swerved 
 quickly to the right, his left arm grazed 
 the other's right, and he was past. 
 
 They were entering the stretch. Strid- 
 ing ahead, with first place easily his, was 
 the veteran. The second blue jersey was 
 not more than a rod ahead. The Fresh- 
 man fastened his eyes upon the advanc- 
 ing back, and, foot by foot, came up to 
 it, as you would pull yourself, hand-over- 
 hand, up a rope. He shut his eyes for an 
 instant, and again swerved to the right. 
 Then he heard something from the wait- 
 ing stands down the track. For several 
 seconds there had been confused cheer- 
 ing, but he had not understood it. This
 
 88 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 was something he had never heard before. 
 It was his own name shouted out by the 
 black waving mass that stretched all along 
 the straightaway to the tape. All in a 
 flash it came to him that the great crowd, 
 instead of being a cruel, silent, staring 
 enemy, was with him. And the track, 
 instead of being a sort of operating table, 
 was a place on which to run and some- 
 times to win. And the other runners, the 
 spectators, every detail of it all, were only 
 parts of a big game which, after all, ought 
 to be fun. 
 
 Fifty yards away in front he could see, 
 stretched breast-high across the track, the 
 narrow line of crimson tape. With the 
 shouts at his side sounding gloriously in 
 his ears, he took his eyes from his rival, 
 and held them to that narrow streak of 
 red. In his mind he took in the number 
 of strides and the strength it would take 
 to reach it, just as you understand a 
 whole sentence of print at a glance. He 
 felt that he could do it, though it had 
 come to be amazingly hard. For the 
 track had taken on an odd habit of rolling,
 
 HIS FIRST RACE 89 
 
 rather like the deck of a ship; once it 
 came up to meet him so that his foot 
 struck before he meant it to. From the 
 finish mark he could hear the trainers 
 sternly calling, " Keep your feet ! Keep 
 — your — feet ! " 
 
 Then at last he saw the back in front 
 of him waver a bit in its course, and the 
 arms and upper body begin to pump. The 
 Freshman fixed his eyes again on the 
 wavering number, and again drew him- 
 self nearer and nearer. He was almost 
 neck-and-neck now — just a shade behind, 
 then a shadow ahead. The two strug- 
 gling figures seemed inevitably to run to- 
 gether. The track behaved strangely, and 
 the Freshman could not keep clear of the 
 man at his side. The tape was not more 
 than ten feet away, when their elbows hit 
 hard against each other. For a moment 
 the Freshman thought he was falling; 
 then, half running, half diving, he lunged 
 toward the tape — and fell on the other 
 side. 
 
 Scrambling to his feet, with arms and 
 neck hanging very limp and breath com-
 
 90 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 ing quick, he looked round him in a dazed 
 way, as though he wondered what had 
 happened. Then, because his knees sud- 
 denly felt very queer and weak, he started 
 slowly to sit down, when many arms 
 grabbed him and he felt himself raised. 
 There was pushing and noise and much 
 dust. As for the Freshman, he blinked 
 down from somebody's shoulder in 
 pleased embarrassment upon the crowd, 
 and then, because he had done a big thing 
 and felt very empty and weak and queer, 
 he let his head droop and beneath his half- 
 closed eyes grinned inside at the crimson 
 " H " on his chest.
 
 THE QUITTER
 
 :i
 
 THE QUITTER 
 
 YOUNG Mr. Jones sat on the bleachers 
 in a perfectly lovely new suit of flan- 
 nels and wearing a new straw hat, with 
 a very aesthetic hat-band, which shone 
 airily in the afternoon sunshine. He as 
 looking very fit, he was quite free from 
 every care, all the other admirers of Miss 
 Bannerly were gnashing their teeth in 
 envy, and Jones was convinced that the 
 world was a very comfortable place in- 
 deed. 
 
 For one thing, he was going to see a 
 race in peace. He had slept like a babe 
 all the night before and he hadn't spent 
 the morning rubbing his damp hands to- 
 gether, and wishing for some hygienic 
 anaesthetic which would put one to sleep 
 the day before the games and let one 
 wake up fresh, and rather pleasantly sur- 
 prised, just as one's race was called. 
 These were invitation games, so that 
 
 93
 
 94 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 nothing particular hung on any particular 
 race — unless, perhaps that mile run in 
 which several New Haven men had en- 
 tered — and Jones could sit at his ease, 
 with a free conscience and that interest 
 which only an outsider can have, and 
 watch a lot of young men whom he knew 
 very well, and whose particular abilities 
 and failings he knew all about, running 
 themselves out for his amusement. It 
 was a very beautiful day, so beautiful — 
 with the fresh green in the grass and the 
 willows, and the warm May sun smiling 
 down from the blue, and the nice-lookinsf 
 people in nice-looking clothes sitting all 
 about and chatting quietly — that he 
 didn't even bother to talk very much, but 
 just sat back and smiled now and then 
 and let himself bask in things. And as 
 he watched the shot-putters poised for 
 the throw, with their right arms drawn 
 back into a tensely coiled living spring 
 and their outstretched left arms outlined 
 against the trees, and the sprinters prac- 
 ticing starts at the top of the track below 
 the Willows, and the white figures and
 
 THE QUITTER 95 
 
 the crimson and blue sweaters dotting the 
 green near the starting Hne about the 
 field-house steps, he was pleasantly con- 
 scious of the fragrant beauty of it all and 
 \vhat a great thing it was to be young and 
 fit and about to run — which you don't at 
 all feel when you're actually about to 
 race, and you're doubling the knots in 
 your spiked shoes, and licking your lips 
 with your cottony tongue and listening to 
 3'our heart thump and wondering why 
 that Eli — who feels just as you do and is 
 worried to death at your maddening 
 coolness — should look as though lie were 
 made of rawhide and steel springs and 
 was ready to bite the heads off ten-penny 
 wire nails. 
 
 "Whee-ee-eel!" 
 
 Good gracious ! What was that shiver 
 up his backbone and that quick throb un- 
 der his handkerchief pocket? And why 
 (lid he feci as though someone had sud- 
 denly called on him for a speech ? It was 
 only the hurdlers crouching for the start 
 of the first heat away down there at the 
 other end of the straightaway.
 
 q6 a break in training 
 
 *' You must know just how they feel ! " 
 murmured Miss Bannerly, 
 
 " I guess I do! " said Jones, taking off 
 his hat and fanning himself. There was 
 a far-away snap, a little puff of smoke 
 floated off over the grass, and the four 
 runners were already taking the first hur- 
 dle. And how prettily! Thud — thud — 
 thud — clip ! Thud— thud — thud — clip ! 
 With each stride perfectly calculated, the 
 swift rush, rise, clip and recover smoothed 
 into one motion as the notes of a violin 
 are drawn out in one sweep of the bow; 
 how the four white figures fairly ate up 
 the ground and sailed toward the finish 
 line ! 
 
 " Pretty ! " whispered the girl. 
 
 " Yes," murmured Jones. 
 
 He had never had an idea that track 
 games could be so much fun. He had 
 always been like the man who beats the 
 cymbals in the band, and now for the first 
 time he was out and away from it all and 
 he could catch the tone of the swift, 
 sweet music. 
 
 How easy and simple it seemed, sit-
 
 THE QUITTER 97 
 
 ting there in the stands ! That quarter- 
 mile dash — merely a swift and pretty bit 
 of running! And yet he could feel even 
 now the start of the only four-forty he 
 had ever raced, the sudden collapse at 
 the lower turn, the struggle through 
 quicksand to the tape and now — a swift, 
 pretty bit of running, and that was all ! 
 How easy to see that the second man 
 was really all in at the three hundred 
 mark, and that if young Gray had 
 sprinted then instead of waiting, he 
 could have finished second, possibly even 
 won. How ridiculously plain that the 
 Freshman who dropped out at the lower 
 turn, was running himself out in the first 
 two-twenty ! 
 
 This new point of view filled Jones 
 with excitement and delight and he began 
 talking to Miss Bannerly with such vi- 
 vacity and charm, that she was presently 
 compelled to murmur : 
 
 " I'm awfully glad that yoii didn't have 
 to run." 
 
 That was, of course, one way of put- 
 ting it, and he was just telling her that
 
 98 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 although he'd rather run than eat, there 
 were some things even more important 
 than running when 
 
 " Whee-ee-eel ! " And over the grass 
 came the far-away cry of, " All out for 
 the mile ! " 
 
 As the sound struck his ear he started 
 instinctively, and he forgot on the in- 
 stant all about the beautiful day and the 
 girl and how fit he felt, and he was back 
 with the rest of them in the contestants' 
 room, just jumping up out of his blan- 
 ket, with his heart knocking against his 
 ribs. He took out his stop-watch and 
 carefully set it. Was it because this was 
 his own event and he knew all about it 
 that the men seemed to look more wor- 
 ried as they took their places at the start- 
 ing line? Young Merriman was posi- 
 tively ghostly. Jones kept his eye on 
 him. 
 
 " Do you see that one on the outside? " 
 he whispered, " I've beaten that man 
 time and again ! " 
 
 "Why — then why aren't you running?" 
 inquired Miss Bannerly. They do ask
 
 THE QUITTER 99 
 
 such difficult questions. The truth was 
 that in the trial to pick the four, this man 
 Merriman, who nobody had reckoned 
 with, and whom Jones had, indeed, beaten 
 every time he had been in the same race 
 with him before, had hit up the most un- 
 expected and spectacular sprint the mo- 
 ment they rounded the first turn of the 
 last lap. It isn't at all easy, after you 
 have run three laps, to come up into your 
 sprint that far from home, and when 
 Jones did finally let himself out — if such 
 an ironical phrase may be used to describe 
 the groggy battle of the last fifty yards — 
 young Merriman beat him out for fourth 
 place by a wabbly neck. And when 
 everybody wanted to know what he had 
 been afraid of and why he hadn't sprinted 
 before, he swore to himself that he had 
 had enough of it, and that for once he 
 would survey the games like a gentleman 
 in his proper raiment and his right mind. 
 It is much easier to put this down here 
 than it was for Jones to explain it, and 
 he had hardly begun when the starter's 
 pistol snapped and they were off. He
 
 lOO A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 leaned forward and pressed the spring of 
 his stop-watch. In his mind he was jost- 
 Hng with the others for the pole. It 
 was a terrific moment. The girl laughed 
 lightly. 
 
 " Look at them bump each other! " she 
 cried. 
 
 Jones glowered at her absent-mindedly, 
 and back at the track. A man he knew, 
 coming up to get a better view, sat down 
 in the aisle beside him. 
 
 "Too bad about Foote, wasn't it?" 
 he said. " Slipped on the stairs in the 
 locker building and sprained his ankle! " 
 Jones suddenly saw that there were only 
 seven men running. That meant — it 
 meant, among other things, that with the 
 only really first-class man of the four out 
 of it, young Merriman stood a chance of 
 a place — stood a good chance — hang it 
 all — of winning ! 
 
 The line trailed out. Could that be 
 a mile gait they were running? How 
 slow and dog-trot it looked from the 
 stands ! Merriman was third. As the 
 pack trailed on round the first lap, he
 
 THE QUITTER loi 
 
 pressed his pacemaker and at the upper 
 turn, starting the second lap, swung out, 
 sprinted a few steps and cut in just be- 
 hind the leader. There was some cheer- 
 ing and polite applause. Jones knew him 
 well enough, however, to see, by the look 
 of his face as he strode past, that he was 
 pretty well up in the air. Two things 
 were likely to happen. He might go to 
 pieces or his overwrought nerves might 
 carry him through to run as he had never 
 run before. Jones settled back with a 
 pleasantly barbaric satisfaction at what 
 he was about to see. 
 
 Round the second lap they strode, in 
 Indian file, on to the five-eighths, and up 
 past the Willows toward the finish of the 
 third. 
 
 All at once there were little breaks in 
 the file. It was that vague premonitory 
 stir which shows that the point is being 
 reached where the race ceases to be a 
 dogged grind and suddenly shifts into the 
 sprint for home. To know when this 
 point has been reached is extremely im- 
 portant. If one starts to jump a picket
 
 102 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 fence and yields for the least fraction of 
 a second to that qualmish feeling that 
 comes just at the take-off, one is likely to 
 balk altogether, or land ignominiously 
 tripping. Blow it aside, leap hard and 
 trust to luck and a sort of outside force 
 comes, sometimes after one is in the air, 
 and lifts one over handily. There is the 
 same psychological instant in a race. The 
 men who " never know when they are 
 beaten," take it without knowing it. The 
 veteran runner feels it by instinct, or ar- 
 ranges it. From the outside one can 
 easily see the spot where the change be- 
 gins; to perceive it on the inside, with 
 senses jaded and goaded by the running, 
 is very hard indeed. 
 
 Very suddenly, just as they crossed the 
 three-quarter mile stone, the man who 
 had led all the way, broke into a half 
 sprint. Before young Merriman could 
 hit up his pace he was ten yards behind. 
 ■Jones saw his startled, haggard face, saw 
 his fists go up as he responded to the 
 challenge and his head snap back — a bit 
 too far with a quarter-mile yet to go —
 
 THE QUITTER 103 
 
 and he knew that, one way or the other, 
 within the next two-twenty the race 
 would be all over but the shouting. 
 
 In an instant the wavering file was dis- 
 arranged and broken. Down the back- 
 stretch they all went in a mad run, the 
 three in front keeping their relative 
 places, the others jostling back and forth. 
 All at once everybody began to yell. The 
 leader was weakening. He had set the 
 pace from the breakaway, and young 
 ]\Ierriman's hysterical speed in the third 
 quarter had not let him lower it as he 
 ought to have done. Jones's practiced 
 eyes caught all the subtle signals of dis- 
 tress, and the sight nearly drove him off 
 his seat. All the steam stored up in his 
 two days' rest and lack of worry seemed 
 shouting for release. 
 
 "He's got him! He's got him!" he 
 cried. He wasn't thinking of the fact 
 that at the seven-eighths mark a man is 
 about as well fixed for intelligent calcu- 
 lation as an exhausted swimmer going 
 down for the second time, but of what he 
 could do to that man in front if he could
 
 104 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 only jump out on the track now. And 
 at that moment the man in third place 
 who had been paced by Merriman all this 
 time, swung out, jostled Merriman's el- 
 bow as he passed, and with a burst of 
 speed which he had picked out of the air, 
 so to speak, began to walk away from 
 him. 
 
 It was a heart-breaking challenge, com- 
 ing just then. The boy responded. He 
 held his own for a dozen strides, looked 
 almost to be gaining, then, all at once, 
 stopped. He didn't fall, he wasn't quite 
 " out." He just stopped. And with his 
 head down and his arms hanging limp 
 and stepping unsteadily he started back 
 across the grass toward the field-house. 
 Something was said afterward about his 
 losing a shoe, but the fact remained for 
 all that that he had quit, with two men 
 ahead in distress and two hundred yards 
 yet to go. 
 
 " Look at him ! " cried Jones. " Why, 
 the man's stopped ! " He could not be- 
 lieve his eyes. His blood was up, he had 
 been running the race in his rival's shoes,
 
 THE QUITTER 105 
 
 and in each of Alerriman's strides had felt 
 himself overhauling the men ahead. 
 
 " If I could only get out there! " He 
 was pounding his knees in despair. " I 
 could beat 'em — just look how easy it 
 would be ! And he's going to win — that 
 Eli — do you see ? He's all out and Merri- 
 man's going to let " 
 
 " Maybe he's hurt," suggested the girl, 
 watching the beaten boy limp across the 
 f^eld. 
 
 "Hurt! Hurt!" Jones mopped his 
 forehead with his handkerchief. " Why, 
 he had the race! Another thirty yards 
 and he'd have won! Oh! " he groaned, 
 "Quitter!" 
 
 The girl looked at him inquiringly, and 
 something of his chagrin and desperation 
 communicated itself to her. 
 
 " If only you could have run ! " she 
 cried. 
 
 "Yes! If only I had run! If I had 
 I would have been in the race! But I 
 can't run — don't you see, it's too late." 
 
 " Quitter ! " repeated the girl in a whis- 
 per. She was looking across the field
 
 I06 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 at young Alerriman, now stretched on the 
 grass near the field-house, with his face 
 buried in his sweater, and the word was 
 only a sort of echo of her sympathy, but 
 it came out at a strange instant and Jones 
 looked around quickly and flushed. 
 
 " Oh, if you only could have run ! " she 
 said. There was a lot of yelling, which told 
 that the race was being finished out, but 
 Jones did not even look that way. He 
 was thinking very fast. 
 
 " I think I shall run ! " he said, quiet- 
 ly. And at this he arose. Of course, Miss 
 Bannerly didn't know at all what it 
 meant, so she merely smiled at him 
 kindly. 
 
 *' There are still three races left " — he 
 turned suddenly to Miss Bannerly — 
 *' You see I've just got an idea. And it 
 won't keep. And so I'm going over to 
 the field-house — if you don't mind — 
 Please don't mind — and take off these 
 clothes and run one of those open handi- 
 caps with a lot of strange gentlemen and 
 give them the race of their lives and — 
 and maybe bring you back one of those
 
 THE QUITTER 107 
 
 big, shiny mugs you can see on the table 
 over there on the field. Please don't 
 mind," concluded young Jones, helplessly. 
 " It's my last chance, and I've really got 
 to and it'll only take a minute." 
 
 " Of course," said Miss Bannerly, who 
 didn't understand at all, but was a very 
 nice young person indeed. " And don't 
 forget the cup !" 
 
 Young Jones burst into the locker- 
 room with somewhat the same pictorial 
 effect that might be produced by drop- 
 ping a basket of roses into a boiler-room 
 full of stokers. He pulled off his flannels, 
 tossed the straw hat on top of a dusty 
 locker and jumped into his running clothes. 
 Everybody had been entered for every- 
 thing as was the enthusiastic custom in 
 invitation games and of the three events 
 that remained Jones chose the handicap- 
 half because it came first. He had never 
 tried the half before, but, as he explained 
 to his friend Apley, he had a new idea 
 and he wanted to try it before it got away 
 from him. Apley. who was studying his 
 programme to find out Jones's handicap,
 
 lo8 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 said that he would be lucky if nothing but 
 the idea got away from him, 
 
 "You get twenty yards," said Apley. 
 " but the scratch men aren't going in, and 
 the New York A. C. man on the ten yards 
 didn't come up, so you're running scratch, 
 that's what you're doing. There's a gen- 
 tleman named Devanny on the twenty- 
 yard mark, too " — it seemed to amuse 
 Apley immensely — " he comes from 
 Worcester, eats cinders and runs in his 
 sleep, and Mr. Corrigan from Somer- 
 ville, who ought to be at scratch, but 
 gets twenty-five and — why — if — here 
 isn't " 
 
 Jones looked where Apley's finger 
 pointed and saw a " Y." It was nobody 
 they had ever heard of, but in that race 
 the unknown stood for his whole college, 
 and the shock was so great that he could 
 only throw his arms about Apley's neck 
 and declare that he died happy. 
 
 And, of course, Jones won. At the 
 quarter he had cut down his field. When 
 honest Jerry Devanny, who ran races as 
 methodically as he might saw wood,
 
 THE QUITTER 109 
 
 started to move up at the backstretch 
 turn, Jones, thinking only of how slow 
 the pace would appear if he were looking 
 on, swung out into the middle of the 
 track, and took the bit in his teeth. At 
 the three-eighths he had fought Devanny 
 to a standstill, and he felt that same lift 
 coming, which, when you have once got 
 up in the air, seems to carry you over the 
 impossible wall. Rounding the lower 
 turn he pulled away and with his friends 
 laughing and the trainer nearly in col- 
 lapse, romped down to the tape, in what 
 the racing reporters might describe as 
 " under double wraps and going away." 
 
 " Always thought he had it in him," 
 rattled Apley, when he and Jones had 
 gone back to the stands ; " but the trouble 
 with him's been, you know, he was such 
 an awful quitter." 
 
 "Sir!" Aliss Bannerly raised mena- 
 cingly a limp parasol, which had chanced 
 to break just as the runners swung into 
 the stretch. " What shall we do to him ? " 
 she demanded. 
 
 Jones tossed Apley a benign acknowl-
 
 110 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 edgment of the " We " and " I don't be- 
 lieve I would do anything," he said. " Be- 
 cause," and meditatively he clamp- 
 clamped the lid of the pewter mug up and 
 down, " the grand-stand point of view 
 is very illuminating. Because he's really 
 quite right." Young Apley looked from 
 one to the other and smiled with great 
 good humor. 
 
 " Jones," he began, oracularly, " you're 
 a noble fellow. How true the words of 
 the graduates that in these our sports we 
 but prepare for those sterner — I mean," 
 he broke off, laughing, " maybe you'll 
 have a chance to use that new idea again."
 
 LEFT BEHIND

 
 LEFT BEHIND 
 
 EVERYBODY in the house— in all the 
 world it seemed — was sleeping, but 
 the Vandalia filler sat up in bed, staring 
 with dry, wide-open eyes at the wall. Tlie 
 dormer room, tucked up under the roof, 
 was stuffy and close and smelled of heat 
 and wallpaper and rag carpet. Through 
 the little window, from the trees and 
 grass outside, came the steady whirring 
 of the tree-toads and crickets. Suddenly 
 the stillness was broken and the campus 
 clock tolled two. As the harsh note 
 grated on his nerves his heart gave a 
 thump and lie threw himself back and 
 buried his face in the hot pillow. It 
 seemed as though he must shut out the 
 world and forget. But he couldn't for- 
 get, and you can shut out the world with 
 a pillow — only so long as yon can hold 
 your breath. He slipped over the edge 
 
 •'3
 
 114 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 of the bed — that ridiculous, high, hot 
 feather-bed — and with his chin in his 
 hands and his elbows on his knees, 
 blinked at the little windows and the 
 patch of moonlight on the floor where 
 the Other Man lay sleeping. And as he 
 watched him, snoring there comfortably 
 in his sleep, his own secret returned again 
 and bit into him, as it had returned so 
 many times that day and night, and all 
 the disappointment and bitterness and 
 despair of it. And he felt that life had 
 tricked him, cut him off in the flower of 
 his youth and put him on the outside, 
 and he was an outcast with his hand 
 raised against the world. 
 
 When they had arrived that night, with 
 a lot of the other teams that had come 
 down for the interscholastics, and had 
 been assigned to that one remaining va- 
 cant room, the Other Man had told him 
 to go ahead and take the bed, because, as 
 he explained, a miler needed all the sleep 
 he could get, whereas a bit of wakeful- 
 ness the night before the games only 
 served to put an edge on a sprinter's
 
 LEFT BEHIND 115 
 
 nerves. " It'll make me start quicker," 
 said he, spreading a blanket on the floor. 
 That was just like the luck of the Other 
 Man — to give up something and after all 
 to get it back again. And the Vandalia 
 Miler blinked at him, and thought and 
 thought, and wondered whether the Other 
 Man would make the 'varsity in his fresh- 
 man year. For the Other Man was going 
 away to college and the Vandalia Miler 
 couldn't go. That was his secret, which 
 had been his for only a day, and which 
 he was somehow too proud to tell. That 
 was why he believed that he was an out- 
 cast, a pariah — why, a shivery abyss 
 yawned between these two old friends, 
 though you might have thought that it 
 was but a yard or two of rag carpet that 
 separated him, sitting there on the edge 
 of the bed, from the Other Man, sleeping 
 in his blanket on the floor. They had 
 grown up in Vandalia, in that little prairie 
 town, from the beginning; gone swim- 
 ming together and skated and rung door- 
 bells, gone through the grammar-school 
 and into the high-school, and then, when
 
 ii6 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 most of the town boys were dropping 
 out to go to work and the ones who were 
 going to college went away to " prep." 
 school, they had decided to stick by the 
 ship. They would stick by their town 
 as long as they could, but when they had 
 to leave they were going, not to one of 
 the State universities, not to Chicago, but 
 down into the distant and glittering East. 
 One didn't go down East to college from 
 the Vandalia High-School. They were 
 about the only men left in the class after 
 their sophomore year; the rest were girls 
 — the girls they had grown up with and 
 written notes to and divided their apples 
 and candy with, back in the kid days. 
 Once there had been a cane-rush — some- 
 body had read about one in a book — and 
 two legs and an arm were broken and 
 one boy nearly killed. The girls were 
 ordered to keep out. They jumped in, 
 carried water, bandaged black eyes with 
 their handkerchiefs, freshman girls untied 
 the freshmen as fast as the sophomores 
 tied them up — that's the sort of girls they 
 were. And he and the Other Man were
 
 LEFT BEHIND 117 
 
 the only men in the class and going down 
 East to college afterward. Probably you 
 do not understand just what that meant. 
 You may know, perhaps, some little high- 
 church school, built on the top of a hill 
 like a robber baron's castle, where there 
 are just about enough boys to make up 
 the teams if each boy plays on all of 
 them, and the one who is captain of the 
 eleven is generally captain of the nine 
 and the track team and leads the banjo 
 club. 
 
 If you were chosen captain of the 
 eleven in your freshman year, you would, 
 of course, be a much greater man than 
 the President. But you wouldn't have a 
 lot of good-fellow girls to watch you and 
 to tell you so. And the Vandalia Miler 
 had both — he and the Other Man. 
 
 They pounded out the only decent 
 eleven the school had ever had and a nine 
 and a paper, and all the rest of it, and 
 divided everything — just as though it was 
 a Trust. One of them would write the 
 editorials calling down the faculty and 
 the other would preside at the mass-
 
 Ii8 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 meetings; he would lead the mandolin 
 club, with about six yards of satin ribbon 
 which one of the girls had given him tied 
 to his mandolin to show that he was 
 leader, and the Other Man would lead the 
 glee club and sing all the tenor solos. 
 And at last, in their senior year, they got 
 up a track team. It was the last chance 
 they had — after June the deluge. They 
 sent to Chicago for real running clothes 
 and spiked shoes — it had been sneakers 
 and trousers cut off at the knees before 
 that in Vandalia — and taught the school 
 a brand new cheer. The merchants put 
 up the money to send the team down to 
 Pardeeville, and the night before they 
 left there was a mass-meeting and a dance 
 and speeches. The Vandalia Miler, 
 blinking at the torn mosquito-bar that 
 covered the little window, smiled grimly 
 as he thought of that speech — of that 
 droll school orator of theirs, older than 
 the rest of them, with his high forehead 
 and Henry Clay scalplock, and his arms 
 outspread and his voice in his boots : 
 " With every heart in Vandalia beating
 
 LEFT BEHIND 119 
 
 for you, every eye turned down the prairie 
 toward the South, you go — to run for 
 Vandalia, to win for Vandaha, and if not 
 to win, to fight to the last ditch for the 
 purple ' V ' upon your breasts ! " And he 
 and the Other Man had gone home to- 
 gether on air, and told each other how 
 they were going to make the team when 
 they got down to college and show those 
 effete Easterners what it meant to meet a 
 real man and — and there was a light in 
 the library window when he got home, 
 past midnight though it was, and his 
 father was in there locked up with his 
 lawyer. Something had happened. It 
 wouldn't be announced for a day or two 
 yet, but everything had gone to smash, 
 and it meant that the Vandalia Miler must 
 stay behind and go to work in the hard- 
 ware store. That's where they had ar- 
 rived at last, though his father would 
 have had him go on just as he had 
 planned. He didn't sleep much that 
 night, and he had gone down to the train 
 the next day as late as he could and 
 slipped on when nobody would see him,
 
 120 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 while the girls were singing and waving 
 flags from the station platform and the 
 rest of the men were leaning out of the 
 windows and laughing and waving their 
 hats. And here he was — where he had 
 longed to be — sent down on the team to 
 run for his school and his town, and it all 
 seemed like something in a pantomime, 
 outside of him and far away, unreal and 
 part of a horrid dream. But he had to 
 run. It came back, just as it did every 
 minute or two, like a quick pain. He 
 w^ent hot all over. Those others, who 
 were going to fight it out with him, were 
 all sleeping now, just like the Other Man. 
 He must hang on to himself — get some 
 sleep. He gritted his teeth, squeezed his 
 fists, and told himself that after all they 
 were kids and he was now a real man. 
 There are a number of things — he would 
 begin very sternly — more important than 
 going to college, and a 'varsity initial 
 won't help you much before a judge and 
 jury or patch up anybody's broken bones 
 or tell how the market's going, but — and 
 here he slipped and raced away again —
 
 LEFT BEHIND 121 
 
 but no more will a Victoria Cross nor a 
 rag from the captured colors. And just 
 as long — just as long as there are men in 
 the world with hearts under their coats 
 and blood in their veins there'll be some- 
 body to work the last gun and to head 
 the forlorn hope and fling a life away for 
 a smile or a cheer or a bit of ribbon. And 
 it doesn't make any difference whether 
 he's got on a cuirassier's breast-plate or 
 football canvas, a running suit or khaki. 
 And when the others are ready to go 
 and the band begins to play, it isn't any 
 
 fun to be left behind and He got 
 
 sorrier and sorrier for himself, which is 
 a very, very bad thing for a very young 
 man to do, until at last he flung himself 
 back on the bed, and wath his head full 
 of charging cavalry, photographs of 
 'varsity teams, batteries galloping into ac- 
 tion, and lonely outcasts left behind, he 
 finally dropped asleep, just as the night 
 was graying and the birds were begin- 
 ning to chirp in the trees outside. For 
 just a minute he forgot, and then some- 
 body shook him and he saw the Other
 
 122 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Man was standing over him, fresh as 
 paint. 
 
 " Gee, man ! " he laughed ; " you look 
 dead as a smelt ! Don't mean to say you 
 stayed awake with all that bed to range 
 about in ! " 
 
 " Oh, no," said the Vandalia Miler; " I 
 slept all right." 
 
 He ran very well in spite of everything. 
 Had he had a bit more experience in rac- 
 ing, he would have tried sooner to get 
 within striking distance of the leaders. 
 As it was, coming round the upper turn 
 into the stretch, he sprinted past the fifth 
 and fourth men and lost his feet and fell, 
 completely run out, just as he was being 
 beaten for third place about seven feet 
 short of the tape. It was one of those 
 races of which the spectator may always 
 remark that if the man had had a bit more 
 sand he would have won. The Other 
 Man had already won his brilliant victory 
 in the hundred when the Vandalia Miler 
 was beaten. A lot of people were con- 
 gratulating him and the trainer of one of 
 the State universities had just promised
 
 LEFT BEHIND 123 
 
 him board and tuition if he would enter 
 there that fall as the Miler staggered over 
 the line. The Other Man said things 
 to the trainer and told him that he guessed 
 he'd mistaken his man. 
 
 " Where we're going," and he smiled 
 at the Vandalia Miler as he helped him 
 to the dressing-room, " they don't have 
 professionals on the team ! " The Van- 
 dalia Miler didn't say anything — you 
 can't say much just after you've run your- 
 self out in a mile race — but just as soon 
 as he could, he pulled on his clothes. He 
 was special correspondent for the Van- 
 dalia Blade. They had made him feel 
 very proud and important a couple of 
 days before when they had asked him to 
 " rush in a thousand words after the 
 games, just as soon as he could jump on a 
 wire." So he dragged himself over to 
 the railroad station and jumped on the 
 wire. It was not what you would call 
 a creative mood. But he sent the story. 
 By biting his lip and stopping every little 
 while he told all about it, while little black 
 spots chased each other up the paper, and
 
 124 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 the rest who had been beaten were com- 
 ing to, and the Other Man was making* 
 friends with the " prep." school stars and 
 promising to look them up when he got 
 down East. 
 
 When the story was off the wire he 
 went back to the boarding-house and lay 
 down on the tall feather-bed. He was 
 still there when the Other Man came up 
 to dress for the dance that was to be 
 given for the visiting teams that night in 
 the college gym. The Other Man began 
 early because, with only a little wavy 
 mirror and a smelly kerosene lamp, a wet 
 hair-brush and a straight stand-up collar 
 about as high as a cuff, it takes one quite 
 a while to make one's self look like a 
 Gibson man. The Other Man spatted 
 down his hair in the light of the little 
 lamp and whistled between his teeth ; the 
 Vandalia Miler lay on the feather-bed 
 staring at the whitewashed ceiling and 
 thinking. He couldn't ask the belle of 
 the ball down to the football game next 
 autumn ; he couldn't promise to send back 
 a college pin for a red satin pillow with
 
 LEFT BEHIND 125 
 
 a white initial on it and bet boxes of 
 Huyler's on sure things with all the girls 
 who wanted to lose and make tobacco- 
 pouches for him. He couldn't put on any 
 dog at all. It was back to the tall grass 
 for him. 
 
 " Better hurry up and get ready," said 
 the Other Man, puffing over his tie. 
 
 '' Don't think I'll go," said the Vandalia 
 Miler. He mumbled something about 
 having a headache and feeling pretty 
 dopy. " What's the sport, anyway," he 
 added, " meeting a lot of girls you're 
 never going to see again? " He was, you 
 see, in a pretty bad way. The Other Man 
 turned round and stared. Then he 
 laughed. Such remarks were not worthy 
 a reply. 
 
 "See you there!" he chirped pres- 
 ently. Then, with his trousers turned up 
 an extra reef and his straw hat stuck on 
 one side — all very rakish and kinky — he 
 blew out and down the stairs, three steps 
 at a time. The Vandalia Miler thought 
 some more. After a while he got up, 
 stretched, and rubbed his eyes. Then he
 
 126 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 jammed his running clothes into his suit- 
 case — they weren't going to be much use 
 to him any more — and started for the 
 station. Everybody in Pardeeville was 
 going to the dance. On the front porches 
 in the Hght of the hall lamps he could 
 see the girls slipping their light scarfs 
 over their shoulders, and now and then 
 far down a cross-street catch the glimmer 
 of white through the trees. The sidewalk 
 was narrow, with a picket-fence on one 
 side and big elms on the other, and every 
 little while he and his suit-case would 
 have to flatten up against the fence while 
 a couple passed him, with low words, 
 perhaps, that he couldn't hear, and a rip- 
 ple of laughter, white dresses — whiter in 
 the dark — and a breath of perfume in the 
 air after they had gone. The station was 
 deserted and silent as the tomb. The 
 only sign of life was the lamp shining 
 through the window and the sleepy tele- 
 graph operator nodding over his key. 
 The Vandalia Miler chucked his suit-case 
 against the wall and began tramping up 
 and down, counting the number of steps
 
 LEFT BEHIND 127 
 
 from one end of the platform to the 
 other. After a long while, he went over 
 to the little grocery across the street, 
 bought a box of " sweet caps " and 
 smoked them relentlessly, one after an- 
 other, inhaling the last two or three, to 
 convince himself that he was hardened 
 to all things and didn't care. Really, 
 though, things were getting more and 
 more on his nerves, and he did care. 
 Hours, it seemed, dragged away. He 
 sat on the baggage-truck, trying not to 
 listen. It was clear moonlight, still, and 
 clear as a bell. The gym where they were 
 dancing was only a few blocks away, be- 
 hind the trees, and on the other side of 
 the track was open prairie. There wasn't 
 a sound there on the station platform ex- 
 cept the clicking of the telegraph key, 
 and he could hear the faint music of the 
 violins and the toot-toot of the cornet 
 coming over the trees. 
 
 It was after midnight when the train 
 thundered in. He was in his seat, with 
 his hat pulled down over his eyes, when 
 the rest came down the street on the run
 
 128 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 and the Other Man, panting and excited, 
 bounced into the seat beside him. The 
 Other Man had to tell about it, whether 
 anyone listened or not — what she said 
 and he said, and how she cut her dances 
 right and left to sit 'em out with him and 
 came down to within half a block of the 
 station to see him ofif. And then there 
 was a waltz that the Other Man wasn't 
 ever going to forget — " the finest waltz 
 I ever hope to hear, and that's a fact." 
 The Vandalia Miler stood it for a long 
 time. Once he sat up suddenly and 
 jammed on his hat. 
 
 " For heaven's sake for^r^ it ! " he said. 
 " Aren't you ever going to get over being 
 a kid ? " The Vandalia Miler, you see, 
 had had to get over being a kid in twenty- 
 four hours, and it didn't come so easy. 
 
 " Whatever's wrong with you?" 
 laughed the Other Man. " Never saw 
 anybody so peevish in my life ! " And 
 he began to whistle the tune harder than 
 ever. 
 
 The train was a milk-train. It stopped 
 at every cross-roads. It was stiflingly
 
 LEFT BEHIND 129 
 
 hot and smelly in the car, and the Other 
 Man kept on humming, steadily as a ; 
 
 pianola, and keeping time by snapping 
 his fingers, but for all that, the Van- ' 
 
 dalia Miler finally dropped asleep. He 
 dreamed that he was down East, after 
 all, and winning the mile, down a track , 
 
 about like a sublimated skating-rink, with 
 an audience of a billion or two people, ris- 
 ing to him from a sort of stadium made 
 of pure white marble and gold. He was 
 just being heaved up in the air by the 
 frantic populace when he woke up. And 
 the Other Man was shaking him by the j 
 
 arm and telling him that they were back ; 
 
 in Vandalia. He didn't need anyone to 
 tell him that. It was growing light as 
 they stepped off the train — that dead-to- 
 the-world time of night when the lamps | 
 
 are getting pale. He was just blinking 1 
 
 his eyes open and seeing the old station ! 
 
 and the lumber-yard and the Waldorf ' -j 
 
 Cafe, and everything inside him seemed \ 
 
 to be caving in, when the Other Man, ! 
 
 still up in the air and keen as a mink, be- 
 gan to bray out his everlasting waltz.
 
 130 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 The Vandalia Miler jumped as though a 
 revolver had been shot off just behind his 
 ear. He whirled round and almost 
 yelled : 
 
 "For heaven's sake, man, shut up!" 
 The Other Man looked at him and 
 laughed. 
 
 " I don't see what license you've got to 
 be so all-fired grouchy," he said. " If 
 you'd won " 
 
 "Well?" cried the Vandalia Miler, 
 stepping closer. 
 
 " It looked to me " 
 
 " Looked to you! Are you calling me 
 a quitter? " 
 
 You must remember that it had lasted 
 two whole days and nights now and the 
 ends of his nerves were all sticking out. 
 
 " Say it, will you? " He dropped his 
 suit-case on the sidewalk and clenched his 
 fists. " Just say it now — hoiv did it look 
 to you ? " And then, before anyone 
 guessed what was coming, he shot out 
 with his fist. The Other Man's hands 
 were down, helpless. He caught it fairly 
 on the tip of the jaw and went down in a
 
 LEFT BEHIND 131 
 
 heap, and the VandaHa Miler stood over 
 him, half waiting to swing again, half 
 scared at what he had done. The others 
 rushed in to pull them apart, but the 
 Other Man just jumped up with a grim 
 little laugh, as though it was all a sort of 
 joke and the Vandalia Miler a kind of 
 wild man with bad manners. Then he 
 walked ahead with the rest. All in all, it 
 was about the completest thing he could 
 have done. It left the Vandalia Miler, 
 you see, quite on the outside. And that 
 was the end of Damon and Pythias — and 
 all their plans and dreams. The next day 
 the Other Man went down East to tutor 
 for his entrance exams. The Vandalia 
 Miler went to work in the hardware store, 
 selling frying-pans and shingle nails. 
 
 The Vandalia Miler left the store in 
 charge of the repair-shop man and started 
 home for supper. He had just sold an 
 improved gasoline stove to a farmer's 
 wife from Vienna Centre who had never 
 burned anything but wood, and he was 
 considerably excited. He swung up State
 
 132 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Street, whistling. There was a bulletin 
 in the Blade window with letters in blue 
 ink splashed on it a foot high. This is 
 what he read — what stopped his whist- 
 ling short: 
 
 TRIUMPH OF" VANDALIA BOY 
 
 Underneath was a dispatch with a New 
 York date-line, telling how the Other 
 Man had won the intercollegiate mile at 
 Mott Haven that afternoon. He felt his 
 face getting hot. He put his hands in 
 his pockets and squeezed his finger-nails 
 into his palms so that folks wouldn't see. 
 There was a beautiful picture framed up 
 in his mind — a picture built up of Sunday 
 supplements, stories in magazines, and the 
 imagination of a young man who had 
 never seen Mott Haven, and who stood 
 on a wooden sidewalk on the main street 
 of a freshwater town a thousand miles 
 away. It was a sort of composite of 
 Henley and a Thanksgiving game, and 
 the Other Man stood in the foreground 
 in the afternoon sunshine, panting easily 
 and smiling politely at the applause. In
 
 LEFT BEHIND 133 
 
 the two years that the Other Man had j 
 
 been away he hadn't come back even for j 
 
 his vacations, and he was getting to be 
 
 a we -used -to -know -him -when -he -was - 
 
 young sort of a man. There had been 
 
 many stories about him in the Blade. 
 
 News was rather scarce out there, and . 
 
 they Hked to hear about each other. And j 
 
 every time the Other Man did anything 
 
 the town people felt somehow that Van- 
 
 dalia had done it and were glad. There 
 
 was considerable local pride in Vandalia. 
 
 They would do anything for anybody 
 
 who did something for the town. But the 
 
 Vandalia Miler hadn't learned this yet. ! 
 
 He got away without being obliged 
 to talk to anybody, and hurried home. 1 
 
 There, without knowing just why, he un- 
 earthed his old running clothes, and just { 
 as the sun was setting that evening the 
 Vandalia Miler started jogging round 
 the old dirt track at the fair grounds, | 
 training again for the mile. 
 
 They didn't go in very heavily for ] 
 
 sport in those days in Vandalia, and 
 everybody soon knew what he was doing
 
 134 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 and wondered why. The high-school 
 boys came over of late afternoons and 
 watched him run. Then they got to pac- 
 ing him, and finally they asked him to 
 help them get up a team to lick Sugar 
 River. Sugar River was a town about 
 twenty miles north of Vandalia. The 
 only difference between the two towns to 
 an outsider was that one had an opera- 
 house and a six-story hotel, and the other 
 had ten blocks of brick paving. A foot- 
 ball game between Vandalia and Sugar 
 River would have made the '94 Spring- 
 field game look like an international peace 
 congress at a vegetarian breakfast. The 
 Vandalia Miler helped them with the 
 team. He didn't know, of course, that it 
 was about the most important thing he'd 
 ever done in his life and he was thinking 
 too much of himself and the Other Man 
 to be very much interested. But he did 
 it as well as he knew how. Sugar River 
 annihilated them. They lost every point. 
 It didn't especially increase Vandalia's 
 love for Sugar River. 
 
 The Vandalia Miler was embarrassed,
 
 LEFT BEHIND 135 
 
 but he kept up his own running, not train- 
 ing enough to get tired of it, or stale, but 
 just enough to keep him fit and getting 
 better. Some days he took a lot of little 
 sprints, some a jog of five miles or so, 
 some a rest or a bit of tennis, but no 
 smoking, and all the time plenty of sleep. 
 Sometimes he'd try it at sun-up, before 
 the rest of the town was awake, just to 
 test his steam and press himself a bit; 
 and sometimes, on moonlight nights, 
 when he could see the track plain as day, 
 he'd go over after dark and whirl off his 
 mile at top speed, stripped to the buff — 
 racing through the moonlight with the 
 cool night smell coming up from the grass 
 and the cool wind blowing on him all 
 over. Those were the times when he even 
 forgot the Other Man. It seemed as 
 though he was tireless, eating up the dis- 
 tance like a ghost with a feeling all the 
 time of Fve-done-this-before-in-the-dawn- 
 of-things-a-million-years-ago. The next 
 day, when he was back in the hardware 
 store, he would smile inside at ordinary 
 folks plodding about in their foolish store-
 
 136 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 clothes. The point is, you see, he began 
 to run for the fun of running. It was the 
 only thing he'd had for company since 
 the Other Man went away. By the time 
 summer was over he was brown as an 
 Indian and hard as nails and he could 
 run like a broncho. 
 
 In August, in Vandalia, came the 
 Clearwater County fair. It was the big- 
 gest fair in the State — more people, big- 
 ger pumpkins, fatter hogs, taller corn, 
 more balloons and bands and red lemon- 
 ade and noise. The fair grounds began 
 to fill up with red thrashing-machines and 
 candy booths and side-show tents — not 
 the place for a young man who preferred 
 to be alone. On the afternoon of Wednes- 
 day, the third day of the fair, the Van- 
 dalia Miler stopped at the corner drug- 
 store for a drink of soda-water, on his 
 way home. He was just swallowing a 
 glass of Arctic Mist and recalling that a 
 preparation known as Lemo Kolo had 
 tasted just like it a year ago, when out 
 through the window, over the colored- 
 water jars, he saw the Other Man, home
 
 LEFT BEHIND 137 
 
 again after his triumphs in the vast and 
 ghttering East, togged out in very tricky 
 flannels and blowing along State Street, 
 bowing right and left, and beaming like 
 a fresh-plucked rose for joy at getting 
 home. You might just as well have 
 flashed a searchlight in his eyes at ten 
 paces. He was all in. The two years 
 that had passed rolled up like a patent 
 window-shade when the spring slips, and 
 he was back at the railroad station, just 
 home from Pardee ville, watching the 
 Other Man walk away through the mel- 
 ancholy dawn. He saw him pushing open 
 the screen, and he braced himself for an 
 instant to face it out, cold and rather 
 haughtily. Then he flung a dime on the 
 counter and, red as fire, hurried out the 
 side door. 
 
 That night the Blade published a long 
 programme for Thursday, the big day at 
 the fair. There was to be a special ex- 
 cursion from Sugar River, a free-for-all 
 trot and a tw^o-fifteen pace, the McHenry 
 Zouaves, the Diving Horse, a fat ladies' 
 potato race, Pavella the King of the Tight
 
 138 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Wire, and — " an open mile foot-race for 
 the championship of the world." That 
 was the way the Blade put it. They 
 could always be trusted in such cases to 
 do the right thing. Of course it was the 
 Other Man's crowd who had conceived 
 the idea of the race. He had brought 
 some of his friends home with him from 
 the East to show them what the West was 
 like, and they had thought it would be 
 good sport to make him trot out and per- 
 form for the girls and the merry villagers. 
 " For the championship of the world," 
 said the Blade, " that this is no mere jest 
 is evidenced by the fact that first among 
 the list of entries appears the name of our 
 famous young townsman, the present in- 
 tercollegiate champion. He informed a 
 representative of the Blade this afternoon 
 that he had kept up his training for just 
 such a contingency as this, and that he 
 never was in finer fettle. The scribe 
 found him at his home. ' The Elms.' on 
 the beautiful estate north of the city, 
 where he is entertaining a number of 
 wealthy young society men from Eastern
 
 LEFT BEHIND 139 
 
 hon-ton circles, and found him as modest 
 as he was when he left his native town 
 two years ago. He said that nothing 
 would please him more than to run at the 
 fair-grounds' track. ' For it was here,' 
 said he, ' that I won my first race, you 
 know ! ' " 
 
 " Oh, hell! " said the Vandalia Miler. 
 And then he called up the superintendent's 
 office at the fair-grounds and told them 
 to enter him for the mile. 
 
 4: :)c ^e :): H< 
 
 There was, in the first place, a piping 
 hot August afternoon, the kind that they 
 have out in the corn belt, when not a drop 
 of rain has fallen for a couple of months 
 and the leaves are drying up on the trees 
 and the grass is yellow and crackly under 
 foot, and the dust follows after the farm- 
 er's wagon like smoke. Then, inside a 
 high board fence, was the fair-grounds, 
 with big wooden halls here and there, oak- 
 trees with locusts singing away in the 
 branches, and packed full of people and 
 prize cattle and pumpkins and lunch-boxes 
 and chewing candy and noise. There were
 
 140 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 farmers in their store-clothes just in from 
 thrashing and farmers' girls in white 
 dresses with pink and baby-blue ribbons, 
 and, in between, children with sticky pop- 
 corn and red balloons and squawkers. 
 There was a "natural amphitheatre" with 
 benches running along the side hill, where 
 the hushed crowd gaped at the spellbinder 
 waving his arms beside the ice-water 
 pitcher. There were prize pig pens and 
 sheep pens, the art hall with its pictures 
 of peaches tumbling out of baskets and 
 watermelons just opened with the knife 
 lying beside them, and the tents where 
 Diavolo ate glass and blew fire out of his 
 mouth and the beautiful young lady stood 
 out on a platform by the ticket-box, in 
 faded pink tights, with a big wet snake 
 wound around her throat and her span- 
 gles blinking in the sunshine. There were 
 sample windmills and cane-ringing games, 
 and wherever there was room a man 
 shaking popcorn or pulling candy over a 
 hook, or a damp little shed smelling of 
 vanilla, where people were eating ice- 
 cream and drinking red lemonade. You
 
 LEFT BEHIND 141 
 
 get all that and lots more going at once, 
 with the barkers yelling and the sledge- 
 hammers thumping on the strength- 
 testing machines and the merry-go-round 
 organs squealing away, with the sun 
 blazing at ninety-four in the shade and 
 everywhere the smell of hot people and 
 clothes and stale perfume, of lemonade 
 and popcorn and peanuts and dust and 
 trampled grass — you take all that, draw a 
 third-of-a-mile circle through the thick of 
 it, push the crowd back a bit, and you 
 have the Vandalia track that day as the 
 engine bell in the judges' stand tolled out 
 the warning signal and the old marshal 
 on his white circus horse rode down the 
 track sidewise, bellowing out the " mile 
 foot race fer the champeenship of the 
 world ! " 
 
 As he caught the sharp command of the 
 bell — the same bell that for years and 
 years had called up the trotting horses 
 from the stables — the Vandalia Miler 
 jumped out of his blanket in the Tight- 
 Wire Man's tent and pushed through the 
 crowd to the mark. The farmers' girls
 
 142 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 giggled as they saw his bare legs and a 
 train of small boys followed him, gaping 
 solemnly in the manner of those deter- 
 mined to see just how it was done. The 
 Vandalia Miler was very pale. As he 
 took his place on the starting line he was 
 the only one there ready to run. He 
 stared straight ahead at the people edg- 
 ing up closer and closer to the little lane 
 that was left for them to run through, 
 licked his dry lips and rubbed nervously 
 his bare left arm. There they were, the 
 farmers and the townspeople, the men and 
 the girls that he and the Other Man had 
 grown up with and gone to school with. 
 And he felt that if he could beat him — 
 so slim and smiling and sure — beat him 
 in Vandalia, there and then, with Van- 
 dalia and the county and the old crowd 
 
 looking on The engine-bell clanged 
 
 again peremptorily. 
 
 " Coming ! Coming ! " Somebody was 
 shouting uproariously over the heads of 
 the crowd. A big tan buckboard drove 
 in between the surreys and lumber- 
 wagons, and out hopped the Other Man,
 
 LEFT BEHIND 143 
 
 all wrapped up in a great plaid ulster, his 
 bare ankles showing underneath it. He 
 threw off his coat and stood there laugh- 
 ing and shaking hands with his friends — 
 in his 'varsity running clothes, the crim- 
 son ribbon across his chest. The Van- 
 dalia Miler saw him and gripped his fin- 
 gers tight. It seemed to him that the 
 crowd suddenly became still; the uproar 
 of the squawkers and carousel organ 
 sounded vague and far away. At the 
 same moment there was a stir just under 
 the stand, and a big, tow-headed fellow 
 began to pull off his overalls and shirt. 
 " Hey, there! " he called up to the start- 
 ers ; " I want to get in this ! " The crowd 
 began to laugh good-naturedly, but the 
 Vandalia Miler didn't laugh at all. He 
 was trying to remember where he had 
 seen this farmer's face. On the sleeve- 
 less jersey which the tow-headed man 
 wore underneath his flannel shirt was a 
 spot cleaner than the rest. It was where 
 an initial had been torn away. He 
 turned to find the Other Man in front of 
 him, smiling and holding out his hand.
 
 144 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 He took it, scarcely knowing what he 
 did. 
 
 " So we're going to have it out, right 
 here and now," laughed the Other Man, 
 looking him straight in the eyes. 
 
 " Yes," said the Vandalia Miler. His 
 mouth was all cotton, so it came in a quick 
 sort of whisper. " Yes," he repeated. 
 
 " I hope," began the Other Man, and 
 then he paused and grinned a little and 
 blushed. " It's been quite a while — I hope 
 
 " All at once someone cried — 
 
 " Now, ready! " The crowd that had ap- 
 parently been pushing and shoving aim- 
 lessly about the judges' stand closed into 
 a compact mass and out came a yell — one 
 of those old-fashioned, wild-Indian, give- 
 'em-the-axe, and all that sort of thing 
 yells, with Sugar River at the end. 
 " Sugar River — Sugar River — Sugar 
 River! " three times, like that. It was 
 like marching into the middle of an Irish 
 picnic with a brass band playing " Boyne 
 Water." A hoot and a howl came back 
 from all along the track and the crowd — 
 all Vandalia, it seemed — began to stam-
 
 LEFT BEHIND 145 
 
 pede in toward the judges' stand. The 
 Vandalia Miler grabbed a couple of hand- 
 fuls of long grass from the turf at the 
 side of the track and wadded them up in 
 his hands for *'corks." His face wasn't 
 as pale now and a new look jumped into 
 his eyes. He turned to the Other Man, 
 yelling above the uproar of the crowd : 
 
 " You want to look out for him: He's 
 a ringer, and he's running for Sugar 
 River ! " And in the thick of the noise 
 and the pushing and the dust, the starter 
 swung his hat downward and with the 
 single cry of " Go ! " sent the three run- 
 ners away. 
 
 The Other Man cut across from the 
 outside like a flash and took the pole. 
 The Vandalia Miler closed in behind, 
 tight on his heels, eyes hooked to his 
 back, just below the shoulders. The tow- 
 headed man trailed the two, big-boned 
 and heavy, but striding long and strong 
 as a horse. Into the crowd they went — 
 a sort of curving chute, walled in by faces 
 and clothes smelling of popcorn and dust, 
 and a baking sun beating down from
 
 146 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 overhead — like three machines, stride and 
 stride ahke, the Other Man leading the 
 way like a race-horse, strong and confi- 
 dent, as if he were only playing with the 
 game. Out into the open and the cooler 
 air of the back-stretch they swung, past 
 the red thrashers and pig pens, round 
 the lower turn, and toward the judges' 
 stand again. They were going like a 
 three-horse tandem, the Vandalia Miler 
 so close up that the dirt from the Other 
 Man's spikes splashed his shins. He 
 could see indistinctly the crowd still jost- 
 ling and shouting under the wire, see the 
 lobster-red face and white mustache of 
 old Skerritt, the starter, leaning out on 
 the rail of the judges' stand toward them 
 and bellowing through his hands some- 
 thing about beating out Sugar River. He 
 felt the mass open up and close in after 
 them, the suffocating walled-in chute 
 growing hotter and heavier, the pull of 
 the second quarter beginning to drag hard 
 on his legs and wind, and at the time he 
 saw plainly that the Other Man was, if 
 anything, increasing the pace — pushing
 
 LEFT BEHIND 147 
 
 ahead like a doped race-horse, at a half- 
 mile gait, forgetting that there was any- 
 body behind him. The pace held — 
 screwed up tight — stride and stride alike, 
 round the upper turn and into the open 
 again. Out of the corner of his eye he 
 saw a big mullen leaf — one of his old mile- 
 stones — slip past their feet, the beginning 
 of the third quarter. But the shade of a 
 let-down in the pace which he expected 
 there and which prepares for the last 
 quarter never came. As they struck the 
 cooler air — it was like getting out of a 
 cornfield into the road — the noise about 
 the judges' stand — Sugar River and Van- 
 dalia all mixed together — came reaching 
 across the field bigger than ever, and 
 every time it puffed out louder the Other 
 Man's back jumped ahead a bit. The 
 Vandalia Miler stuck close — not press- 
 ing, not letting himself lose an inch. He 
 was holding every ounce of steam, run- 
 ning every stride with his head. Round 
 the lower turn they pounded, every dozen 
 strides or so letting slip another link, and 
 then, just as they were rounding into the
 
 148 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 straightaway there suddenly puffed up 
 from the judges' stand a great roar of 
 " Sugar River! " At the same instant he 
 heard a hoarse breath just behind his 
 neck, an arm bumped his elbow, and the 
 tow-headed man pushed by on the outside 
 and went up after the leader. The crowd 
 down the track was going wild. Old 
 Skerritt was banging the engine-bell for 
 the last lap like a fireman going to a fire. 
 The Vandalia Miler didn't shift his eyes 
 a hair's breadth from the Other Man's 
 back. He was surprised at himself to 
 see how cool he was ; how he was calcu- 
 lating whether the Other Man was tire- 
 less or had merely lost his head, whether 
 the Sugar River man could make good 
 with his bluff or whether, as they neared 
 the crowd, he was just playing to the gal- 
 lery. In the next two-twenty he would 
 know. There was more than a quarter 
 yet to go, and he tried to feel it all as a 
 unit and know just how much he had left. 
 Past the stand and into the crowd again 
 — the Sugar River man's chin slewed 
 round a bit. He was lifting into the
 
 LEFT BEHIND 149 
 
 sprint! And a quarter yet to go! He 
 saw the Other Man's back jump forward 
 as he met the challenge, saw them fight- 
 ing, shoulder to shoulder, knew the mo- 
 ment had come, that here and now the 
 race was to be lost or won, and he 
 squeezed his grass corks, shut his eyes, 
 and bore on hard. For a dozen strides 
 he fought, like a man under water trying 
 to get to the surface, when suddenly, 
 from the edge of the track ahead came a 
 quick, triumphant cheer. He opened his 
 eyes. The Sugar River man was ahead! 
 He had squeezed past and was on the 
 pole, drawing away from the Other Man. 
 But it was not the Sugar River yell that 
 was echoing across the track. It was a 
 new and different cry — nervous, compact, 
 fierce, relentless. It forced itself through 
 the general hullabaloo and dominated it, 
 and suddenly it came clear to the Van- 
 dalia Miler's ears — the old drum-beat 
 cheer — his cheer — the one he and the 
 Other Man had taught the school before 
 the team went to Pardeeville. And his 
 name was at the end. Down came a pair.
 
 I50 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 of arms a rod or two in front of him and 
 out it smashed again — that wonderful yell 
 with the sudden shift of the beat in the 
 fifth line, like getting under a big weight, 
 all together, and shoving after you've 
 been pounding it. He fought on in a 
 dizzy sort of trance, not knowing what 
 was happening, but feeling suddenly 
 light and confident and strong. He felt 
 himself gaining — felt that somehow the 
 backs of the other two men were drawing 
 irresistibly nearer. Someone ran along 
 beside him, waving a hat. " You've got 
 him! You've got him! Keep it up! 
 Keep it up ! " the man cried. " Van- 
 dalia! Vandalia! Vandalia!" All at 
 once it came to him that he Jiad got him — 
 got the Other Man — got the ringer — that 
 Vandalia was going to beat Sugar River 
 and they were calling on him to come. 
 The cheer shot out again — a little farther 
 ahead — as fast as the beat stopped it was 
 caught up and carried on. Someone — it 
 was the boys he'd trained who had done 
 it — had strung relays all round the track. 
 It became a regular bombardment. The
 
 LEFT BEHIND 151 
 
 crowd listened — wavered — and broke 
 loose. They came swarming down from 
 the seats on the side hill and over the rail. 
 They followed along behind in a drove, 
 yelling like Indians. It looked like a pic- 
 ture of the flight from Pompeii with 
 everybody laughing — boys and men and 
 girls stumbling along in the grass at the 
 side of the track and scuffling up the dust 
 behind. He could hear them laughing 
 and screaming: "Keep it up! Keep it 
 up! " and " Beat him! Beat him! Van- 
 dalia! Vandalia!" and steadily all the 
 time from behind and in front came that 
 drum-beat cheer, ripping and pounding 
 out above the rest. The relays crossed 
 each other and overlapped, taking it up 
 and beating it in — swinging it, jamming 
 it at 'em. It seemed as though that whole 
 fair-ground had jumped together in a 
 twinkling and was calling on him to come. 
 It all hit him in a flash — shivered up his 
 backbone. He had stayed behind, but he 
 was somebody, after all, and he stood for 
 somebody and they stood for him and ex- 
 pected things of him. He forgot the
 
 152 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Other Man, forgot himself. He was 
 Vandalia now, and VandaHa must smash 
 Sugar River. It was more than getting 
 even, more than winning; it was fighting 
 for his friends, for his town, for his coun- 
 try. His feet seemed lifted from the 
 ground. 
 
 Maybe Vandalia was a dull place to 
 live in, but it was everlastingly healthy. 
 All his running and going-to-bed-with- 
 the-chickens came back to help him now. 
 Rounding into the stretch, he took the bit 
 in his teeth and turned everything loose. 
 With every stride he seemed to pull the 
 Sugar River man's back nearer, hand over 
 hand. His elbow bumped an arm and 
 he heard the Other Man gasping out, 
 " Beat him ! Beat him ! " as he passed by. 
 Nothing could have stopped him then. 
 There were fifty yards left. He shut his 
 eyes again; his elbow bumped an arm, 
 then the engine-bell was clanging over- 
 head, and the tape hit his chest. The 
 crowd closed in, there was a great uproar 
 all around him, and he turned just in 
 time to see the Sugar River man go down
 
 LEFT BEHIND 153 
 
 and out about six feet short of the line, 
 and to catch the Other Man in his arms 
 as he drove forward and fainted clear 
 away. 
 
 He picked him up like a child, and, 
 spent as he was, carried him into the 
 Tight-Wire Man's tent. Outside the 
 crowd cheered and howled, and pushed 
 up against the canvas walls, and from the 
 distance came the boom of the band, 
 marching toward them across the field. 
 He swabbed on witch-hazel desperately — 
 panting, dizzy with excitement and happi- 
 ness, and a queer, happy-weepy remorse. 
 The Other Man opened his eyes and 
 blinked. 
 
 " Bill " — he grinned the best he could 
 and held out his hand — " I guess we've 
 been fools long enough." Then he got 
 tired again. " It was a great race," he 
 said, without opening his eyes. The Van- 
 dalia Miler swabbed on the witch-hazel 
 the harder. " Yes ! " he panted ; " Yes ! " 
 He meant that he thought it had been 
 long enough. Somehow he couldn't re- 
 member any words. And then the crowd
 
 154 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 pushed in. The Other Man raised him- 
 self on his elbow. 
 
 " Go out to them, Bill," he said ; " I'm 
 all right. You don't want to forget — 
 you're ' champeen ' of the world ! " 
 
 They grabbed him up, protesting, lifted 
 him on their shoulders and carried him 
 out of the tent. He felt the cooler air 
 and he saw the faces turned toward him 
 and heard the cheers and cries, and then 
 they marched out to the people — his own 
 people at last — with the band booming 
 away at the head. 
 
 That, in a way, is about what they've 
 been doing to him ever since, out there 
 in Vandalia. At least that is what Star- 
 buck said as he told us the story — we 
 who had run together and played together 
 and were back from East and West to 
 see another class day, to tell the old 
 stories, run the old races over again, 
 swing home again with the pack through 
 the frosty autumn, toward the lights of 
 the Square. Starbuck, you see, was the 
 Other Man. 
 
 " They've just nominated him for gov-
 
 LEFT BEHIND 155 
 
 ernor out in our State," said he, " and 
 they're telHng the story of that race all 
 the way from South River Junction to 
 the North State line. I'm one of Bill's 
 spellbinders; that's \vhy I tell it so well. 
 He's our Favorite Son now, and he's 
 only just begun." Starbuck took a couple 
 of brisk pulls at his cigar and blew a big 
 cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. 
 
 " Begins to look," said he, cheerfully, 
 " as though I was the man who was left 
 behind."
 
 WINGS OF CLAY
 
 *
 
 WINGS OF CLAY 
 
 IT was his last race. He might never — 
 in that busy, serious " afterward " — 
 even tliink of wearing a spiked shoe 
 again. He would run, of course — for 
 fun. But even were he some day to run 
 a race, never again could he stand just 
 as he stood now — fit as it was possible 
 for him to be, his four years' experience 
 behind him, the level track down which 
 he had flung himself so many times call- 
 ing him for the last time to come. And 
 it was tlie race, too. He and Eleven — 
 " that man Eleven," as we called him, 
 had met at last. The instant had come 
 when he must put everything to the 
 touch and beat his best ; win or — some- 
 thing breaks. 
 
 He was the fastest man we had. He 
 li.'id come out on the track one May 
 
 '59
 
 i6o A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 morning in his Freshman year, explain- 
 ing that he had never worn a spiked shoe, 
 and had then slipped along a hundred 
 yards in eleven seconds. The trainer 
 called him back and asked him who he 
 was. Within the week the men with the 
 initials were considering what was going 
 to happen and the second-string men had 
 come to their annual decision that there 
 was no use trying for the team until 
 next year. He was so obviously born a 
 sprinter that, like a lawyer or a doctor, 
 he had a sort of manner of this kind. 
 
 One who knew about such things 
 could see broken records in the way he 
 thought, and talked, and bore himself, 
 almost as much as in his lithe, compact, 
 nervous body. As you sat beside him 
 in the drowsy air of the lecture-room, he 
 would suddenly start — particularly if it 
 were well along in the season, and the 
 men were getting just a bit fine — and per- 
 haps his shoe would smartly rap against 
 the footrest. Not understanding, you 
 would inwardly wish that he had more 
 repose of manner, and never suspect just
 
 WINGS OF CLAY i6l 
 
 what the thrill was that had so suddenly 
 snapped him from his dreams. A few 
 hours later, when you both were running 
 trials together, and the pistol really did 
 ring out, you would wonder why he beat 
 you on the start. With a hair-trigger 
 command of his muscles, he had the 
 nerves of a cart-horse. His only sort of 
 worry was the anxiety to do the thing he 
 had done before, well enough to please 
 himself. 
 
 There were four of them in the finals — 
 the two lay-figures who had managed to 
 qualify, he and the other man. Every- 
 body knew that it was his day, that he had 
 waited for this. Everybody was whisper- 
 ing about him and pointing him out as he 
 strolled across the turf from the field- 
 house, a sort of careless Mercury. He 
 was exceedingly graceful and good-look- 
 ing and " different " and he knew that, 
 too, and without knowing it would have 
 been very unhappy. It was part of that 
 which put him past a man ten inches from 
 the tape — this sureness of himself — a 
 something of which the literal-minded
 
 l62 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 were not aware. Maybe vanity is per- 
 missible when one runs in even time. 
 
 Standing just behind the mark and gaz- 
 ing down the track, he took a long satisfy- 
 ing breath and patted his chest comfort- 
 ably. He could see Eleven just trotting 
 across the green from the field-house. It 
 was a way the latter had — a vivid appre- 
 ciation of dramatic values. Eleven was 
 the sort of man who wore his medals and 
 was fond of entering a preposterous num- 
 ber of events in indoor winter meets, 
 where no one worth while was running, 
 and of winning race after race with a 
 bored air while the brass band boomed 
 in the gallery. 
 
 ''Ah!" he nodded, with the politest 
 rising inflection as his rival trotted up. 
 Eleven nodded back and whistled cheerily 
 between his teeth. His racing clothes 
 looked as though they had been made 
 from a museum battle-flag. That's what 
 he wanted. It showed that he had been 
 there before. Eleven grinned. 
 
 " I'm goin' to lose you fellows," he 
 said.
 
 WINGS OF CLAY 163 
 
 The fiendish wail of the starter's whis- 
 tle mounted up and pulsated in the warm, 
 grass-scented air. He heard it — pirouet- 
 ting for a dozen paces down the course — 
 as a battery-horse hears the bugle. De- 
 tails eliminated themselves and he some- 
 how grasped firmly what he had only 
 touched before. It was as though the 
 fragrant summer day, the glimmer of rib- 
 bons and smell of grass, the glory of his 
 strength, the race and the winning of it, 
 were distilled into a nectar which he was 
 just about to drink. 
 
 " On your marks ! " 
 
 Eleven, projecting a withering, who- 
 the-deuce-are-you look at the starter, be- 
 gan to paw out with his spiked shoe, and 
 pack with expert nicety, a hole for his 
 rear foot. The two who didn't count 
 kneeled to their task with playful sighs of 
 self-commiseration. With his right foot 
 firmly braced a few inches behind, and 
 perfectly parallel with the left one, his 
 thumbs and first fingers spanning the 
 starting line and his weight resting easily 
 on his right knee, he gazed down along-
 
 164 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 the white strings, which, fencing each 
 runner into his narrow path, stretched 
 to the finish hne. As his eye set hun- 
 grily on the crimson thread which in less 
 than a dozen seconds was to be broken by 
 the breast of the winner, he had to jam 
 his fingers hard into the cinders to hold 
 back the sudden impulse to leap the dis- 
 tance at a bound. J 
 
 He could " feel " that distance in a 
 single mental impression, as a sort of 
 line-of-beauty curve, with a sweep up- j 
 
 ward for the dive at the start, a sus- ' 
 
 tained middle-distance line, and another 
 sweep upward for the climax at the end, 
 just as you feel the line the lash will 
 take when you are about to crack a whip. 
 Only two things broke this unity — the 
 separate strides — about fifty of them — 
 and two breaths, one at the start and one 
 just beyond the fifty-yard mark. - 
 
 " Ready ! " snapped the starter. ^ 
 
 He raised himself slightly, screwed his 
 rear foot more firmly against the brace, ^ 
 
 and held himself on edge. Eleven gave 
 a hoarse, short cough and spat out his ||
 
 WINGS OF CLAY 165 
 
 gum. The two lay figures grinned 
 weakly. 
 
 " Set ! " commanded the starter. 
 
 Four pair of legs drew taut as bow- 
 strings. At the word there was some- 
 thing like a click inside his head and a 
 hundred yards away, in thin air above the 
 finish line, a pendulum set swinging. 
 None but he knew of it, not even he could 
 see it, but out of the hundreds of times 
 that he had hurled his body toward a cer- 
 tain crimson streak, always with the 
 thought of catching something before it 
 slipped away, he had involuntarily con- 
 structed a material object to correspond 
 to the mental impression. You will re- 
 call in that tale of Poe's, the pendulum 
 whose knife swung back and forth above 
 the inquisitor's victim. This pendulum 
 was something like that — a lofty, sinis- 
 ter thing, swinging there in the air, in- 
 visible, just above the tape. He could 
 hear within him the start of its fatalistic 
 click at the word "Set!" As the four 
 runners strained forward, in the crouch- 
 ing start, until their centers of gravity
 
 1 66 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 hung so delicately that the release of a 
 thread of muscle would project them into 
 the course, the slow, relentless second- 
 beat of the pendulum, "Cli-i-ck! — 
 Cla-a-ck!" grew more and more pain- 
 fully distinct. With the throb of it in his 
 brain, the silent crowd down the track — 
 silent, but waiting only to welcome him — 
 he seemed to feel, by a sort of second- 
 sight, the starter put his hand above his 
 head. His right leg, the rear one, stiff- 
 ened until it was almost straight and then, 
 as they leaned forward, straining — strain- 
 ing — he felt the finger hook around the 
 trigger and 
 
 "They were off! 
 
 He had timed the start so delicately 
 that his rear foot had sprung from the 
 mark when Eleven caught the shot, and 
 the vicious snap of the pistol seemed but 
 to follow his start and lash him across 
 the back. People said afterward that he 
 had beaten the pistol. This was not true. 
 He had merely left the mark at the pre- 
 cise instant of the shot. A mental impulse 
 is one thing; a muscle in motion is quite
 
 WINGS OF CLAY 167 
 
 another. He had merely sent the im- 
 pulse of the start burning along his 
 nerves the precisely proper fraction of 
 a watch-tick before the pistol flashed be- 
 hind him. It was not chance. Some- 
 thing had hold of him. 
 
 As he dove off the mark, out and up- 
 ward, with the pistol shot stinging every 
 ounce of energy into a rush for release, 
 this something within him seemed about 
 to whirl him off his feet. He rippled up 
 into his stride as a well-executed cadenza 
 ripples up the scale. A spasmodic gasp 
 of delight puffed out toward him from 
 the finish line. The crowd had seen four 
 statues leap into life before the snap of 
 the pistol had been carried to their ears; 
 four white patches sweep up a rapid in- 
 cline into erectness, and then, as a tiny 
 smoke-wreath floated off above the green, 
 four vibrating bundles of speed were 
 bearing down upon them. To those at 
 the tape, the runners swelled into view 
 almost as though they were being watched 
 through the large end of an opera glass. 
 He could feel himself acting this out as
 
 l68 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 his piston-rod stride ate up space. He 
 forgot the other man. Every muscle and 
 sense of him was self-centered in the act 
 of reaching the tape. Legs, arms, lungs 
 — every joint and bounding muscle — 
 swirled into a burning unit of automatic 
 action, 
 
 "Cli-ick— Cla-ack!" 
 
 Now they were but a couple of strides 
 from the fifty-yard mark. Interestedly, 
 as something pleasantly incidental, he 
 caught the hiss of Eleven's breath. Shrill 
 and more shrill was the swirl of warm air 
 past his ears. The men who leaned over 
 the finish-line could see the loose stuff 
 of his racing clothes held in stiff-blown, 
 intricate wrinkles like the infinitely trou- 
 bled drapery of the Nike of Samothrace. 
 He was running with every inch of him. 
 
 "Cli-ick— Cla-ack!" 
 
 He was past the fifty now and there 
 were, he could somehow feel, but four 
 beats more — only a score or so of strides 
 in which to leap upon and clutch the pen- 
 dulum before it started its eleventh swing. 
 At that instant the ribbons fluttered like
 
 WINGS OF CLAY 169 
 
 a kaleidoscope and a din rolled out from 
 the stands that drowned the wind-swirl in 
 his ears. Lifted by it he felt himself run- 
 ning as one runs in dreams. 
 
 "Cli-ick!" 
 
 Eleven's breath was lost behind and 
 the red thread shone but thirty feet away. 
 Arms stretched frantically over the ropes 
 that walled the track and out of the gen- 
 eral din came separate entreating cries. 
 
 "Cla-ack!" 
 
 The timers leaned toward him scarce 
 a rod away. He could see them there, 
 squeezing their watches in both fists — 
 see some one, who had slipped through 
 the lines and was crouching under the 
 worsted, pounding the empty air as 
 though he were beating a drum. 
 
 "Cli-ick!" 
 
 All at once he knew it. He was as cer- 
 tain as though a real pendulum swung 
 there before his eyes. 
 
 He would breast the tape before the 
 tenth beat. 
 
 The instantaneous certainty was like a 
 spur that roweled him deep. For an in-
 
 lyo A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 stant he felt as perhaps a trotter feels 
 when at top speed he " breaks," while 
 arms reached toward him and the timers' 
 thumbs trembled over their stop-watches. 
 Then all that was in him burst out at 
 once in the triumphant leap toward vic- 
 tory. 
 
 And he was ploughing over the cinders 
 on his face ten inches short of the tape. 
 Everything went black. 
 
 Then he was lying on the grass with 
 his head in somebody's hands. There was 
 a burning cramp in his left leg and some- 
 one was gingerly feeling of the hot mus- 
 cles a bit above the knee. 
 
 " Ouch ! " He winced and drew away. 
 
 " Broken tendon," said the man on the 
 ground. 
 
 He looked up with the far-away eyes 
 of one whose body has been brought back 
 to earth while his spirit is yet among the 
 gods. Through the legs of those crowd- 
 ing about him he could see Eleven — who 
 had shot twenty yards beyond the tape be- 
 fore he stopped — loping back with the 
 regulation veteran's prance, arms well up,
 
 WINGS OF CLAY 171 
 
 high on his toes, tossing a careless glance 
 at the timers as he came. 
 
 " Ten flat ! " cried a voice. 
 
 As something far off, he saw Eleven 
 nod, allow a blanket to be thrown about 
 his shoulders and, as he came panting 
 over, stage-whisper out of the side of his 
 mouth a deprecating — " Cinch ! " 
 
 " Hard luck, old man," panted Eleven 
 cheerfully, passing by. The crowd closed 
 in tighter. There was a hum of " Ten 
 flat! " and " Even time! " and somebody 
 was crying " He did it in ten flat, Jimmy, 
 and you had him beaten out a good ten 
 yards! Do you hear, Jimmy, ten yards 
 ahead of even time ! " 
 
 " Ten yards." He winced again and 
 closed his eyes. It meant that he had just 
 missed running the race that no man has 
 ever run. The other man had merely 
 won. He had touched that limit beyond 
 which human springs and levers and the 
 power behind them, however strong, can 
 never go. 
 
 Faces were peering down at him, feet 
 lostled close to his side. He looked about
 
 172 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 him, bored and somewhat protestingly, 
 raised himself, and, leaning over, felt ab- 
 sentmindedly of his leg. Then he cringed 
 and gave another quick little grunt. 
 
 " And any old grayhound could do bet- 
 ter." He looked up, grinning. " Won't 
 somebody please take me away ? " 
 
 A',
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 
 
 OF course you became very sore about 
 it. you thought that running was 
 an awful bore and you were never going 
 to race again. You had trained hard for 
 the mile that spring and given up things 
 — pounded round the dusty track while 
 the others were up at Riverside canoeing 
 on the river, gone to bed while the rest 
 were in town at the " Pops " or smoking 
 and singing close harmony on the steps 
 of Hohvorthy, rubbed the bloom off the 
 loveliest weeks in the year and — and then 
 in the end you were beaten. Of course, 
 you knew that you weren't a sprinter and 
 you ought to have known that they were 
 running those first three-quarters too 
 slow ; you ought to have swung out in the 
 lead and let that man Jenkins eat his 
 heart out trying to keep up with you for 
 three long laps and then you might have 
 
 '75
 
 176 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 beaten him out at the finish. But it wasn't 
 so easy to know this, that muggy May 
 afternoon when the sun was beating down 
 hke August and you couldn't get a decent 
 breath and you were running fourth, 
 locked very neatly into the pace of the 
 three ahead. 
 
 A lot of girls you knew stood on the 
 bleachers and saw your disgrace and ap- 
 plauded enthusiastically as Jenkins broke 
 the tape. He was quite nice and mag- 
 nanimous about it later that afternoon 
 when you all met at somebody's tea, and 
 he said that, of course, if a man will go 
 to town " fussing " just before a race, go 
 to railroad stations and bother about time- 
 tables and get his nerves all upset with the 
 noise of trains, and stand up all the way 
 to Cambridge — one always stands up, you 
 know, in the Cambridge cars — why, of 
 course, he couldn't hope to be in any 
 proper shape to run. One can't fuss and 
 keep fit, he said, with just the shadow of 
 a wicked little smile, and he himself had 
 been so ungallant he felt like a profes- 
 sional, he really did — and you grinned
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 177 
 
 and ground your teeth and decided that 
 you would never forgive him. 
 
 You decided also that running was a 
 wretched humdrum sport with no sort of 
 fun in it and that next spring you would 
 go in for baseball or cricket or something 
 in which there was a game. But you 
 never forgot that day nor that race all 
 through the summer vacation. Every 
 time you leaped a water hazard and 
 jogged a bit over the soft turf after a 
 golf ball you thought of your legs and the 
 spring in them and when you were trot- 
 ting up and down the beach between dips, 
 hurdling the life-lines and behaving most 
 childishly, you were really thinking of the 
 last hundred yards of your next race and 
 estimating the difference between the feel 
 of sand and of cinders and wondering 
 each day if you were strengthening your 
 wind and improving your form. Still 
 you weren't quite keen enough to train 
 for the autumn games after you came 
 back in the fall. You played tennis in- 
 stead, and loped a bit each day after- 
 wards, just enough to keep fit, and went
 
 178 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 to the games as a spectator — feeling very- 
 fine with your clerk's badge and your 
 proper raiment and your privilege of 
 watching the new Freshmen. You got 
 enormously excited when the mile was 
 run and you saw, for the first time, just 
 how it looked from the outside, and, as 
 they swung into the stretch and one of 
 the new men came up from behind and 
 won, you ran out and clapped him on the 
 back and you would have given anything 
 if there had been another race right then 
 that you might have thrown off your 
 clothes and gone in. You had thought 
 you'd never race again and here you were 
 suddenly wishing it were spring. 
 
 The Indian summer faded and the 
 leaves began to fall. In the early morn- 
 ings the elms and the ancient dormitories 
 lay in a bluish opalescence as though they 
 were at the bottom of a sea, a haze hung 
 in the air by day, the crisp breath of 
 evening made you think of hot suppers 
 and open fires and all the land smelled 
 faintly of burning leaves and brush. One 
 morning you opened your Crimson and
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 179 
 
 saw a little two-line notice which said that 
 at 4 :30 o'clock that afternoon there would 
 start from the locker-building the first 
 hare-and-hounds run of the year. You 
 stood in your pajamas as you read this, 
 with your toes curling away from the cold 
 bare floor, but your heart gave a percepti- 
 ble jump and a hot glow swept up within 
 you. For days the hazy autumn had been 
 calling you and now at last you heard the 
 call. And you drew in a deep breath 
 and gave your chest a thump and jumped 
 under your icy shower with your teeth 
 set, for your blood was up and you were 
 aching to be up and away — away on the 
 long hard trail 'cross country with the 
 hounds. 
 
 They were an odd lot, those hounds, 
 sitting on the steps of the locker-building 
 as you trotted across the field late that 
 afternoon, shivering in their sweaters, 
 waiting the word to go. There were 
 brown-legged Mott Haven men, wearing 
 their initials inside out ; i)alc divinity stu- 
 dents with spectacles, whose sense of the 
 proprieties demanded flannel shirts and
 
 i8o A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 knickerbockers and stockings and leather 
 shoes, and here and there some mature 
 student of the law who had come down to 
 the East from a far-off inland college and 
 whose story of triumphs, now put aside 
 and forgotten, was mutely told by the 
 faded jersey and the tattered initials of 
 the college he called his own. You looked 
 your new friends over — friends they must 
 be to have heard with you the same call 
 — and at the hares, waiting the word to 
 go, and the timers, muffled to their chins 
 in ulsters, and gradually the gray sky 
 grew darker and you hugged your bare 
 legs as hard little flakes of snow came 
 hurrying down. 
 
 " All right! " nodded somebody at last, 
 and the hares, slinging their bags of paper 
 clippings over their shoulders, swung off 
 on the trail. You watched them jog 
 easily across the field and disappear 
 round the corner of Boylston, flinging a 
 handful of paper behind them as they 
 passed from view. One minute — two — 
 three — four — jiminy crickets! how cold 
 it was — and you all got up and began
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS i8i 
 
 circling about the timers, stamping your 
 feet and hugging your shivering ribs, 
 when — "Five minutes! Go!" said one 
 of them, and away you went on the trail. 
 Two of the old Alott Haven men set 
 the pace. You fell in at a comfortable 
 distance behind ; and behind, with all sorts 
 of good and bad running, the others 
 straggled in single file. Over the grass, 
 now specked with little wisps of snow, 
 you jogged, and down through Harvard 
 Square. The trail led straight through 
 the tangle of trucks and trolley cars, the 
 crowd waiting at the transfer-station 
 stared and gasped and tittered, and you 
 snuggled up to the wide back of the law- 
 school man just in front of you and were 
 glad there were so many in the pack. 
 Down Boylston Street you jogged toward 
 Soldier's Field, round a corner, and there 
 the trail suddenly stopped. 
 
 "Watch out, they've doubled!" the 
 leaders cried. The pack scattered like a 
 lot of beagles, and anxiously searched tht 
 ground. It was very annoying and it 
 took up a lot of time, but it showed that
 
 i82 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 the hares knew the game. Over the top 
 of the nearest high board fence popped the 
 heads of a lot of httle muckers. 
 
 " Aw, yer no good ! " they shrieked in 
 ecstasy. " Git onto dem shapes — Yous '11 
 never ketch 'em!" They felt very sure 
 of this, because, in the five minutes that 
 had elapsed since the hares passed that 
 way they had carefully picked up every 
 scrap of the trail for a block or more and 
 stuffed it in their trousers' pockets. The 
 hounds were scurrying hither and thither 
 and you had craftily retraced your steps 
 to find where the hares had doubled and 
 started a new trail to the northward, when 
 a very near-sighted divinity student with 
 thick glasses picked up the scent a block 
 or so away in exactly the opposite direc- 
 tion, and with rallying cries of "Trail! 
 Trail ! Trail ! " the pack closed up and 
 was off again. 
 
 The hares were bothersome and shifty. 
 They had carried the trail through back- 
 yards and over pickets, between chicken- 
 coops and stables, where the pack had 
 to creep along the tops of fences like
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 183 
 
 SO many alleyway cats. Your jersey 
 caught on barbed wires, raspberry bushes 
 scratched your bare shins, and every min- 
 nute or two at some narrow gate or slit 
 in a hedgerow the hounds, sifting through 
 two by two, elbowed and fumed as they 
 thought of the hares running free in the 
 open by this time a mile or so away. 
 
 For half an hour the pack fretted thus 
 through darkest Cambridge, until, at last, 
 they emerged into the open again, pat- 
 tered across the Longwood bridge and, 
 with the cries of coxswains coming 
 through the distance and wherries and 
 singles shooting past, down stream with 
 the tide, you stumbled into the marshy 
 lowlands that edge the Charles. 
 
 It was real running now. Your feet 
 caught in the tufts of wiry grass and 
 every now and then you slumped down 
 to your knees into a muddy pocket of ice 
 water. The quick weariness of the first 
 three miles — the hardest stretch of a ten- 
 mile run — took hold and took hold hard. 
 You caught a glimpse from across the 
 river of a crew just lifting their dripping
 
 184 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 shell over their heads, and as the water 
 splashed on the boathouse float you 
 wished you could get some of it too. The 
 sweat was coming out on your forehead 
 as you swung at last into the road again ; 
 it was running into your eyes as the pack 
 trailed across Soldier's Field. The great 
 amphitheater was silent and deserted now 
 and with nothing to break the stillness 
 but the puffs of breath and the muffled 
 tread you filed across the gridiron. 
 
 After the pack had passed the field the 
 town gave way to scattered houses, and 
 the houses to open fields and scraps of 
 woodland, and finally you found yourself 
 in the open country. Trot-trot, trot-trot, 
 uphill and down, scrambling over boul- 
 ders and stones, pushing through thickets 
 and brushwood, the pace kept up unceas- 
 ingly. The line began to stretch out now. 
 From the top of each rise of ground you 
 could see the slower ones pulling up the 
 slope behind you, while ahead for a quar- 
 ter of a mile the leaders were carrying a 
 broken line of vivid crimson and white 
 out into the hazy distance. Your blood.
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 185 
 
 slowly and surely heated by the three- 
 mile pull, now burned evenly to your 
 very finger-tips. The heat of it made you 
 laugh at the frosty air, smoothed out 
 every kink in your body, melted away the 
 weight that had pulled on your chest until 
 your lungs worked as easily as a fish's 
 gills and the rich fruity air sank to the 
 very bottom of them. As you felt your 
 arms, moving like pendulums, low and 
 steadily, and your legs stepping light and 
 evenly, and drank in the wine of the 
 autumn air in great conscious breaths you 
 began to know your strength and be sure 
 of it, and you looked from each hilltop 
 over the long trail yet to be traveled re- 
 joicing, and there seemed in all the world 
 nothing worth while but straight limbs 
 and clean thoughts and stout hearts and 
 the free and open country. And you 
 understood what it means to say that the 
 sport is bigger than the victory and that 
 it is not just to break a tape a few inches 
 in front of another man that one goes in 
 to train. For what a good and glorious 
 thing it is — the mere running! The lift
 
 1 86 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 and thrust of the thigh, the rhythm of 
 iintrammeled motion ! The catch of the 
 foot on the pathway, the tireless buoyant 
 progression ! When the air strikes deep 
 in the chest, the arms Hft with the leg- 
 thrust and the muscles all sing the same 
 rhythm ! The regular strides on the level, 
 the in-bend as one sweeps round a town, 
 the relentless pace up a hillside, when the 
 feet grip the ground as the fingers grip 
 the rope in hand-over-hand climbing! 
 The run on the beach in the summer, alone 
 with the gold and azure! Or this long 
 trail homeward in the autumn when the 
 frost's in the air and call answers call 
 through the twilight! What a good and 
 glorious thing it is — the mere running ! 
 
 The gray November day grew grayer 
 and lights began to sparkle through the 
 twilight. You forgot your bare legs and 
 flimsy running clothes, and each of the 
 hounds became merely one of the pack. 
 Now you scrambled up a gravelly gully 
 where the workmen straightened up from 
 their shovels and stared open-mouthed; 
 now you swung through a farmyard
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 187 
 
 where the chickens scattered squawking 
 and the girls of the house stood in the 
 kitchen doors laughing as you passed. 
 Now you swished through an orchard, 
 ducking the low branches and plowing 
 through the crackling leaves. Your foot 
 struck something round and hard and you 
 snatched up an apple from its wrapping 
 of frosty grass which was like wine in 
 your cottony mouth and tasted of the 
 autumn and the out-of-doors as only an 
 apple can taste which has mellowed under 
 its own leaves and been cooled and sweet- 
 ened by frost. 
 
 Over the orchard wall and to the bot- 
 tom of the hill the trail led, straight to a 
 brook too wide to jump and without a 
 bridge. The gang of small boys waiting 
 there assured you earnestly that there 
 " wasn't nothin' nearer than the railroad 
 bridge," full half a mile away. You 
 knew they were lying, but the darkness 
 was closing in rapidly now, there was no 
 time to waste, so into the black water the 
 sweating pack plunged, hip-deep, just as 
 the frosty night was beginning to weave
 
 l88 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 a fringe of ice along the edges. You 
 thought of Valley Forge and the retreat 
 from Moscow as you scrambled up the 
 opposite bank and the wind struck your 
 dripping legs, but before the water had 
 time to freeze it had dried off from you 
 as it would from a stove, and you were 
 pounding down the trail again no worse 
 for your ducking. 
 
 Alongside a wall the path led presently, 
 through an arched stone gateway, up a 
 drive and into a wood. As you peered 
 after the faint scent there suddenly came 
 a blood-chilling baying through the gloom 
 and a couple of great dogs — regular Lit- 
 tle-Eva hounds with spiked collars — 
 leaped toward you between the trees. The 
 pack huddled back to back like ponies 
 attacked by wolves. You thought of your 
 bare legs. There was a call, a rattling of 
 chains. A convent grounds, somebody 
 said. Then the trail was picked up again 
 and the pack hurried on. 
 
 The late November darkness closed 
 rapidly down around you now. The 
 specks of the trail could scarcely be dis-
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 189 
 
 tinguished from the flakes of snow on the 
 grass tufts and the pack felt its way along 
 slowly, with heads bent and eyes search- 
 ing the ground. Every few minutes 
 there was a halt and plaintive wails of 
 " Lo-o-ost Tra-a-ail ! Lo-o-ost Tra-a-ail !" 
 and then from somewhere off in the dark- 
 ness came at last the clear halloo of some 
 keen-eyed veteran, " Tally Ho! Ta-a-ally 
 Ho-o-o ! " Giving tongue the pack closed 
 in again, and again was up and away. 
 You stumbled out of the woods and fields 
 at last, and as you struck an open road the 
 leaders quietly hit up the pace. You 
 could see the line — not so long as it was, 
 some still toiling back there in the woods 
 — swing under the white glare of an arc 
 lamp and suddenly the road turned and 
 you found yourself in one of those flinty 
 macadam avenues that lead straight into 
 town. The country disappeared as at the 
 fall of a drop curtain, rows of yellow gas- 
 lamps crossed each other in the middle 
 distance, and down toward the glow 
 where the town lay the arc lamps of the 
 avenue stretched like a string of stars.
 
 190 A BREAK IN TRAINING j 
 
 Now there was work ahead of you. 
 All afternoon you had had chances to loaf i 
 
 — when the nervous pack were held at a | 
 
 fence or hedge-row, when the leaders 
 were thoughtful enougii to walk uphill, ' j 
 
 or over some of the rougher places, when | 
 
 the trail was lost in the darkness — but 
 there was none of that now. For a good ^ 
 
 two miles down the hard highway not a 1 
 
 bramble or brush or lost trail or fence | 
 
 gave a chance for soldiering. Straight I 
 
 down the road you went, all in a bunch, | 
 
 for none dared to drop behind to come | 
 
 wandering into Cambridge alone that ¥ 
 
 night with nothing but his running "^ 
 
 clothes to cover him. All that tiresome j 
 
 training for the mile helped you now. 
 Every time that you had ever driven 
 yourself under the trainer's watch 
 through the last two-twenty of a time- 
 trial, when the air was muggy as a steam 
 laundry and the mercury was eighty-five 
 in the shade and the cinders were swim- 
 ming before your eyes, made it so much 
 easier now to look down that long stretch 
 with easy confidence, to hook yourself in
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 191 
 
 just behind the leaders, put your arms 
 and back a bit more into it, and laugh 
 at the pace. 
 
 One by one, as you passed each corner, 
 the swinging arc lamps slipped by over- 
 head, steaming breaths showing in the 
 glare as the pack pounded across each 
 circle of light, shadows leaping ahead fan- 
 tastically as you swept on again into the 
 darkness. Past trolley-cars, humming 
 out to the suburbs loaded to the fenders 
 with office folk and pale-faced clerks, 
 past shop-girls and workmen with dinner- 
 pails, past lighted houses, through the 
 windows of which you caught glimpses 
 of tables set for dinner and blazing open 
 fires, the pack sweeps on. How petty, 
 cramped and absurd seemed all the boxed- 
 up world of rectangular blocks, of narrow 
 grooves called streets, of clothes and trol- 
 ley-cars ! How all the dust of over-civili- 
 zation was brushed away as you strode 
 strongly on with the steam of your breath 
 showing in the lamplight and the sweat 
 running down your face. With what a 
 straight-eyed chastity could you sweep by
 
 192 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 those chiffon-and-sachet women-folk who 
 giggled at your honest bare legs and coyly 
 averted their eyes; with what Olympian 
 good-humor could you glimpse that lily- 
 livered youth with a cigarette who glared 
 at you cynically as you passed, shivered 
 and wrapped himself tighter in his foolish 
 ulster. Maybe you would wear an ulster 
 some day, perhaps before to-morrow you 
 would admit the tyranny of straight-ruled 
 streets and clothes, but now, to-night, 
 with your eight good miles behind you 
 and the air of the hills in your lungs and 
 the fire of the chase in your blood, now, 
 at least, you were sure of yourself and 
 free. 
 
 Through the streets of Alston, dodging 
 cars and trucks, down to the railroad sta- 
 tion galloped the pack, clattering down 
 through the echoing subway, up and 
 down again on the other side and along 
 the road to Cambridge. Through the 
 darkness to the left you could presently 
 see the gloomy bulk of the stands on Sol- 
 dier's Field and beyond that the dull glow- 
 ing of the Brattle Square clock and
 
 i' 
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 193 
 
 farther yet in the distance the tower of 
 Memorial. Suddenly the leaders pulled 
 up, panting. ''Here it is!" someone 
 cried. The trail abruptly stopped and a 
 line of paper scraps was laid across the 
 road. It was the end of the trail — the 
 " break." From here it was a run-in 
 home, a mile almost straightaway — down 
 past Soldier's Field and over the bridge, 
 up the hill to the Square and over to 
 the gymnasium steps where the timers 
 waited. " Line up for the break ! " called 
 the master of the hounds, and he looked 
 back over his shoulder into the darkness, 
 panting, as he waited for the duffers to 
 appear. 
 
 As you saw them toil slowly in, saw 
 some flop down at the roadside, and, lost 
 to vanity, flat on their backs, pant up at 
 the stars, saw the straight road stretch- 
 ing ahead relentlessly and thought of 
 leaping off as though you were starting 
 a quarter-mile dash instead of finishing — 
 who should come jogging up out of the 
 darkness from the direction of the Square, 
 out for an ante-dinner bit of exercise,
 
 194 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 with a running mate in a crew sweater 
 beside him, but your friend Jenkins. 
 
 " Hello ! " said he, " what's up ? Lem- 
 me pace you in ! " 
 
 "Pace!" you cried. "I'll race you 
 in ! " and you took your place on the line. 
 You'd put nine miles behind you and he 
 was fresh from his little jog down the 
 street, but your blood was hot and your 
 fighting edge was up and every piston- 
 shaft and cog-wheel in your carcass work- 
 ing together like a well-oiled and exquis- 
 itely adjusted machine. 
 ' " A race it is ! " grinned Jenkins, and 
 he pushed in beside you, toeing the break. 
 
 " Are you ready? " demanded the mas- 
 ter of the hounds, looking along the line. 
 "Go!" 
 
 The pack broke like thoroughbreds at 
 the flinging-up of the barrier. At least 
 that's the way it seemed to you. Your 
 legs, gauged to the easy, 'cross-country 
 pace, seemed tied down and weighted as 
 you tried suddenly to lift them into the 
 long, high strides of the sprint home. 
 Your chest, which but a moment ago
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 195 
 
 drank in the cool air to its very depths, 
 closed on each breath now before you'd 
 scarcely caught it in your throat. The 
 taste of the out-of-doors vanished and 
 the air became raw and hot and rough. 
 But again your training helped and the 
 dogged, good-work-well-done-behind-you 
 weariness of the nine-mile run was quite 
 another sort of thing from that hollow- 
 sided distress that comes when the cold 
 blood first meets the shock of the cinder- 
 path dash. 
 
 Jenkins, fresh as a lark and cocky with 
 his warming, started out at a four-forty 
 clip. You hooked your eyes to his back 
 and lifted your heavy legs into a longer 
 stride. He zvill, will he ! It was more 
 than a sprint from here to the gymnasium 
 and you'd not learned to turn off your 
 ten miles for nothing. He zvill, will 
 he — ar-r-rh ! — Up, guards, and at 'em ; to 
 hell with Yale ; lay on Macduff, and the 
 devil take the hindmost! You saw the 
 Soldier's Field gate slip by and the bridge 
 and the boathouse, and now you were 
 pulling up the hill toward the lights of
 
 196 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 Harvard Square. On and on you went, 
 hungrily, with your legs eating up the 
 distance with the speed that darkness 
 seems to give. Far behind were the most 
 of the pack and those in front kept slip- 
 ping nearer. You overhauled them, one 
 by one, suddenly bore hard for a dozen 
 strides — " Take that ! " you said under 
 your breath — and slipped past. 
 
 As you passed Mount Auburn Street 
 there were only three ahead of you, the 
 master of the hounds, one of the Mott 
 Haven veterans and that nimble Jenkins. 
 The pace and the long pull uphill from 
 the river were telling on him now ; you 
 could see his shoulders pumping into it 
 and — and — yes, his arms were going up 
 and his chin slewing round. Straight 
 through the Square you plunged rough- 
 shod, through the crowd waiting with 
 their transfers and with half a dozen trol- 
 ley-car gongs banging unheard in your 
 ears, and then suddenly, only a furlong 
 away, you saw the lights of the gym and 
 knew that the race was almost done. As 
 you caught sight of them a quick exult-
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 197 
 
 ant strength lifted through you. All the 
 charm and mystery of the autumn, the 
 rough-shod dash through wood and 
 water, the thrill of the chase came back 
 in a whirl. You quite forgot yourself, 
 an amazing recklessness seized you and 
 you turned everything loose. " Take 
 that — and that — and that! " and across 
 the Square you swept, leaped the gutter 
 to the pathway past the Yard, passed the 
 third man and were blowing your breath 
 on Jenkins's neck. Past Massachusetts 
 and Harvard you strode, shoulder to 
 shoulder, and then you bore on hard again 
 and you heard his breath behind you, and 
 there was nobody ahead but the master 
 of the hounds. Him you overhauled just 
 as you reached the close-set posts of 
 the gymnasium; you flipped through 
 togedier, but he lost his stride, and, taking 
 it on the fly, you finished out the last 
 dozen steps ahead and dropped on the 
 steps a winner. 
 
 You will undoubtedly become rich and 
 famous in your day and have your mo- 
 ments of triumph here and there, but
 
 igS A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 you'll be lucky if you ever have more fun 
 than you had then, as you sat on the cold 
 stone steps panting and hot and happy, 
 and watched with the crowd as the others 
 pumped in out of the darkness, and fin- 
 ished one by one. Jenkins was fourth. 
 " Good work ! " he gasped, slumping 
 down on the steps beside you and drop- 
 ping his- damp head against your shoul- 
 der. "I'm down and out ! " 
 
 " You weren't warmed up enough," 
 you laughed. " You know we'd been 
 going it for an hour or two." 
 
 "And finish like that?" he panted. 
 " I've got all I want. I'm not in your 
 class." And as Jenkins happened to be 
 your room-mate and able to put it all 
 over you any day in the sprints, you 
 pulled him to his feet and decided to for- 
 give him after all, and the two of you 
 went down to the baths together. 
 
 The cup was not a very big one, but it 
 looked very well that night as it stood on 
 your study table under the glow of the 
 big lamp. You stretched out in your big 
 chair, deliciously tired, with a soothing.
 
 WITH THE HOUNDS 199 
 
 somnolent fire burning drowsily through 
 and through you, and ran the long run 
 over again. It was, indeed, a little cup, 
 but it didn't remind you of seasick fin- 
 ishes as some of your other prizes did, 
 and the older it got the dearer it was to 
 grow. And years afterwards, when more 
 than a path of scattered papers were 
 needed to take you back to the old lost 
 trail, when it was a far cry to the open 
 country, and all that you could see from 
 your window were rows of dingy brick, 
 and all that you could hear was the roar 
 of trucks and " L " trains and trolley- 
 cars, you had but to look at that tarnished 
 old mug and again you were swinging 
 with the hounds through the frosty au- 
 tumn, again you caught the smell of burn- 
 ing leaves and brush and heard again 
 through the twilight the long-drawn cry 
 of "Tally-ho! Ta-a-ally! Ho-oho!"
 
 I
 
 THE MEN THEY USED 
 TO BE
 
 THE MEN THEY USED 
 TO BE 
 
 TUST around the corner from Madison 
 J Square, and only .half a stone's throw 
 from the avenue and the pattering han- 
 soms, is a little, low, brick stable-building 
 in the face of which are two or three steps 
 and a door. If you enter this door and 
 climb up the old wooden stairs, you will 
 come to a dingy, carpeted locker-room, 
 the walls of which are hung with old 
 framed photographs of groups of ancient 
 athletes, with solemn faces and side- 
 whiskers, like those who used to row 
 when six men made a crew. If you 
 climb a ladder — precisely like the ladders 
 that grow on the sides of haymows in the 
 country — you will emerge in an old gym- 
 nasium. The apparatus is of a pattern 
 different from that in the gym at college; 
 
 203
 
 204 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 you bathe in a little sort of cupboard by 
 filling pails from a faucet and pouring 
 them over your head ; and every time you 
 covertly open a window in the hope of 
 diluting an atmosphere in which are curi- 
 ously balanced the smell of the stable and 
 the vague but depressing odor of mere 
 antiquity, it always closes mysteriously 
 behind your back, like wounds in some 
 invulnerable dragon. 
 
 Here, of a morning, you will find the 
 brothers De Mar, from the music-hall a 
 few blocks away, laboriously practicing, 
 in dingy neglige, the feats with which 
 they nightly electrify the simple audience 
 on the other side of the footlights. Or, 
 perhaps, Feveril Fortescue, idol of the 
 matinees, is devoting his genius to his 
 biceps, against hjs appearance in the win- 
 ter, bare-armed, in the toga of Ben Hur. 
 In the afternoon strange victims of avoir- 
 dupois or the latest method of physical 
 culture trot stubbornly around the little 
 padded track. Now and then enters the 
 dark, devious, muscle-bound youth, with 
 a strap about his wrist, who solemnly ele-
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 205 
 
 vates an enormous iron dumb-bell over his 
 head a dozen times or so — a slowly smold- 
 ering cigarette hanging from the corner 
 of his mouth the while — and then as sol- 
 emnly retires, his exercise and sport over 
 for the day. 
 
 Speaking in the language of other juve- 
 nile ailments, you " get " Wood's in your 
 first autumn after you have come down 
 from college to town. With the first 
 warm breath of the following spring, 
 if not before, you get over it. After- 
 ward, when someone tells you that he has 
 solved the office slave's problem of con- 
 tinuing the undergraduate's regulation 
 ante-dinner sweat-cold-shower-and-rub- 
 down, and begins to describe that classic 
 loft, — " hardly a step from one's room," 
 " right on your way up town," — you have 
 the serene pleasure of wagging your head 
 sympathetically and saying, " Yes — yes, 
 I know ; / had it once." 
 
 Halloway was beginning to feel just 
 about that way. He was an easy-going 
 young man with a tall and very powerful 
 body, with which he could do a great
 
 2o6 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 many things easily and exceedingly well. 
 He was one of those men who are so valu- 
 able to their college that to go in for the 
 teams is a matter not so much of pleasure 
 as of duty; and what with playing half- 
 back every autumn, jumping in the indoor 
 winter games, and training on down to 
 the intercollegiate to win his consistent 
 firsts in the mile in the dual meet and at 
 Mott Haven, Halloway was quite glad 
 enough to cut it all out when he came 
 down to town, to live his own lazy way, 
 eating as much and sleeping as little as 
 he chose, and expending all his energy 
 in rearing the foundations for the house 
 in town and country, the stable and 
 steam-yacht, which seem to lie just over 
 the horizon when one is starting in the 
 Street. It one day came across him, har- 
 rowingly, that he was actually getting 
 fat; and as he was not particularly keen 
 for the Seventh or the Squadron, and not 
 temperamentally inclined for the " ear- 
 nest-worker " gyms, he drifted into 
 Wood's. It W'as only a couple of blocks 
 or so from home, and, as Halloway ob-
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 207 
 
 served, " I suppose a man really ought to 
 do something." 
 
 The winter was nearly over when he 
 began to drop in of afternoons to juggle 
 pulley-weights for a lonesome half-hour. 
 Presently, as the days grew warmer, he 
 decided that one day of this, in the middle 
 of the week, with thirty-six holes of golf 
 at the end of it, was enough exercise for a 
 city man. Then a day came when he de- 
 cided that, after all, even that wasn't 
 worth while. It was a warm, pretty day, 
 the tulips were blooming in Madison 
 Square, and even in Broadway one could 
 tell that the spring had come in the country. 
 
 Halloway had swung over the old row- 
 ing-machines for an imaginary mile or 
 two, taken a turn around the little thirty- 
 lap track, and finally flopped down on 
 one of the mats. As he flung his arms 
 back over his head and closed his eyes on 
 a couple of double-chinned hippopotami 
 who were struggling wath a medicine- 
 ball, he thought of the days when it had 
 seemed to him " work " to go out on a 
 rolled cinder-path and run a fifty-yard
 
 2o8 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 trial. Yes, they were all out of doors 
 now — the runners on the track; the nine 
 was getting its tan on the field ; and the 
 crew men were rowing on the river. He 
 could hear the crack of the cricket-bats 
 over under the Willows, and see the white 
 figures of the tennis-players flashing in 
 the afternoon sun, and breathe the odor 
 
 of the fresh grass, and The nervous, 
 
 fretful squeaking of a rickety pulley- 
 weight woke him back to daylight. Hal- 
 loway rolled over lazily and, with his 
 head still resting on his bare arm, watched 
 the man who was making the noise. 
 
 What an odd little windfall he was — 
 undersized and knobby-jointed, with flat, 
 thin arms and legs, like those of a boy 
 mysteriously grown old! Squeakity- 
 squeak! squeakity-squeak! went the pul- 
 ley-weights; and, as his arms came up 
 and the veins showed very blue through 
 the white skin, the little chap stared down 
 at his biceps with an air of mingled pride 
 and grave concern. He was bald about 
 the temples, there was a red spectacle- 
 mark across his nose, and his face had
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 209 
 
 that curiously gaunt, blue look which 
 comes when a thick black beard, closely 
 shaven, shows through a pallid skin. 
 Squcakity-squeak! Halloway watched 
 the little chap's arms absent-mindedly, 
 thinking of different folk's ideas of exer- 
 cise and sport, and of how this man 
 seemed to epitomize all that was mere 
 muscle-making and lifeless and liltless 
 and leaden, when something in his mo- 
 tions caught his eye. Why, sure enough, 
 it was ! The solemn little man was doing 
 the old Mott Haven pulley-weight drill. 
 Every year, following some occult un- 
 written law, the men who led the gym 
 squads in the winter go through the same 
 series of boresome juggleries. And an 
 old trackman will start off on the drill 
 the moment his fingers touch the chest- 
 weight handles, just as instinctively as a 
 veteran brings his hand to his forehead 
 when some one cries " Salute! " 
 
 Presently the little man dropped the 
 weights and went over to the track. The 
 moment that he stepped off Halloway saw 
 that he knew how to run. There were
 
 210 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 several on the tiny oval already — a gray- 
 haired, purple-faced ice-wagon, pounding 
 round and round in an endeavor to re- 
 duce weight ; a " strong man " in tights 
 and velvet trunks and with a torso bowed 
 and knotted with muscle, who scuffled 
 along flat-footed and shamelessly, an 
 irony in flesh ; but the little windfall chap 
 strode daintily and, as it were, disdain- 
 fully, past them all, his toes touching the 
 track lightly, his arms and back in the 
 rhythm, all of him well in hand. How 
 potent an eloquence there may be in the 
 mere holding of a pair of reins, the hand- 
 ling of an oar ! What little things strike 
 the spark of sport's freemasonry when 
 the " know " comes out in a man and 
 proves him not a duffer; Halloway 
 watched the little man until he had 
 sprinted around the last two turns of his 
 twenty-lap jog, and then he smiled to 
 himself : 
 
 " Why, he's not such a bad sort, after 
 all!" 
 
 When he had taken his water-bucket 
 shower and pattered back to his locker,
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 21 1 
 
 he found the Httle man seated on the 
 bench, solemnly lubricating his limbs with 
 wintergreen oil. Halloway, burnishing 
 off his left shoulder with a rough towel, 
 looked down at him. 
 
 " What's your time for the mile ? " he 
 inquired. 
 
 The little fellow started, and a quick 
 smile crinkled his wizened face. He 
 looked like one who suddenly hears his 
 own language spoken in a strange land. 
 But he caught himself quickly. 
 
 " Never was timed," he said. " Half's 
 my distance." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Halloway, respectfully, 
 " I wasn't quite sure. I thought your 
 stride looked like a miler's." 
 
 He meant that the little man wasn't at 
 all the sort to run a fast half-mile. He 
 had neither the quick strength nor the 
 stride. The little man nodded in a pleased 
 way. 
 
 " Well, you see, I'm not much good," 
 he explained. There was something rem- 
 iniscent about his face, and Halloway 
 felt vaguely that he had seen him before.
 
 212 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 The little man pointed to the floor over- 
 head, whence came the dull thumping of 
 the exercisers, and shrugged his shoulders 
 wearily. 
 
 " You're the first man — why, what 
 made you think I could run ? " 
 
 " I used to run a little bit myself. I 
 know what it looks like, all right. And 
 then I saw you at the pulley-weights," 
 smiled Halloway. " Nobody ever forgets 
 that." 
 
 The little man's face lighted up with a 
 " Then you were there, too," and all at 
 once Halloway recalled the ridiculous 
 two-mile handicap that was run in the last 
 spring meet of his freshman year. At the 
 limit — two hundred yards — was a gorilla- 
 like hammer-thrower who was getting in 
 shape for the all-round championships, 
 and beside him a little unknown — one of 
 those mysterious beings whom one meets 
 in class-rooms and sees now and then in 
 the Yard, who come from nowhere, know 
 nobody, and presently vanish, none knows 
 whither. It was very droll to see the two 
 start off side by side and be overtaken by
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 213 
 
 the scratch man before the half-mile was 
 run. And it was droll to see the big man 
 fall back, and back, and come plowing in 
 after every one had forgotten him. But 
 the drollest part was to see the little man, 
 not knowing at all when he was beaten, 
 hook right on to the leaders as they 
 passed him, and finish, all out and dead 
 to the world, fifth or sixth, just missing 
 a place. 
 
 "Yes," said Halloway; "I was up 
 there, too." The little man tossed his 
 towel into the locker, — the second-tier 
 lockers at Wood's are as high as one's 
 head, — and something like a coin with a 
 bit of ribbon attached to it dropped out 
 on the floor. Before he could pick it up, 
 Halloway had seen that it was a medal, 
 and, as he looked over at the little man, 
 the latter was blushing. 
 
 " I always keep it here," he said in an 
 embarrassed way. " You see, I live in 
 one of those hall bedrooms — in a board- 
 ing-house; and there's a corset drummer 
 lives over me that's always coming down 
 to borrow matches and ask questions
 
 214 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 about things in my room, and there's a 
 fat woman in the room next to me who 
 stays there all day and comes in and reads 
 my letters when I'm gone. Oh, I know 
 she does — I can smell her perfumery on 
 'em. Well, now, you don't want these 
 women — well, damn it all! there's some 
 things you don't want these people to paw 
 over and see. And besides," he added, 
 after pausing for Halloway's grin of 
 assent, " I'd rather have anything like 
 that here. It kind of gives you a brace. 
 It makes things seem more real." 
 
 " Sort of sporting shrine," smiled 
 Halloway. 
 
 " Yes," said the little man, looking 
 hard at him ; " that's about it. That just 
 about says it." He took the medal out 
 of the locker again and turned it over and 
 over in his hand. " It isn't gold ; the gilt 
 is almost worn off on this side. Maybe it's 
 tin for all I know. You see," he explained 
 carefully, " they weren't — that is, they 
 were mucker games." He waited again for 
 Halloway's nod of approval. " You see, 
 I had run in a two-mile handicap and I
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 215 
 
 finished fifth. That was from the limit — 
 pretty near half-way around the track. 
 Well, that was the best I'd ever run, and 
 it was the last chance I'd ever have, and 
 along came these mucker games. I saw 
 a notice of 'em in the paper one day — 
 open handicap — over in East Somerville. 
 And so I went in, and on that last race — 
 you know how they try to stick you if 
 they know you're from out there — they 
 put me at scratch." The little man wrig- 
 gled his shoulders and grinned all over. 
 "Think of that," he said— " scratch ! 
 And they had no policeman to watch the 
 fence, and so everybody climbed over, and 
 nobody paid at the gate, and there wasn't 
 any money, and — and so we got tin 
 medals." There was quite a flush on the 
 little man's face and his eyes were ex- 
 cited. He wasn't at all the little man who 
 had been going through the pulley-weight 
 drill with gritted teeth. 
 
 " And you won ? " asked Halloway. 
 
 " Yes," said the little man ; " I won — 
 from scratch. Do you know what that 
 means — to win from scratch ? "
 
 2l6 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Halloway. He 
 had won his initial in his freshman year. 
 " Great, isn't it ! " 
 
 "You bet your life it's great!" said 
 the little man. 
 
 He was almost dressed by this time, 
 and he turned round from the glass in 
 front of which he had been tying his tie 
 and examined Halloway for an instant 
 to see that he wasn't being laughed at. 
 " That day," said he, " that race— why, 
 that was the biggest thing that ever hap- 
 pened to me ! " Halloway nodded respect- 
 fully. There weren't very many big 
 things happening to the little man now- 
 adays, thought Halloway — the little man 
 wasn't exactly one of your Napoleons, and 
 all that sort of thing — your man born to 
 the purple. 
 
 " It's good enough just to be able to 
 run," cried the little man — " just to have 
 the strength and the wind. It's better 
 yet to run in a good race and be beaten 
 out by a better man; but to start off 
 from scratch, with men just as good as 
 you are, and you just as good as they are.
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 217 
 
 and to jump out and run 'em off their 
 feet " 
 
 " That's something," assented Hallo- 
 way. 
 
 " You see, I had had plenty of the other 
 thing, and — and I knew. I knew what it 
 was to go in time after time, without a 
 ghost of a show, and your heart going 
 like a steam-riveter, and your mouth all 
 cotton, and feeling about as game as a 
 man who didn't know how to box would 
 feel standing up in a twelve-foot ring 
 against Jim Jeffries. I knew what it 
 was to run yourself out race after race 
 and come wabbling in after the crowd 
 had closed in across the track and the 
 men who got places were trotting off 
 to the locker-building. It doesn't do you 
 any good to tumble in a heap then. There 
 isn't even a gallery to see it." The little 
 man had grown flushed as he talked, and 
 he shook his head and snapped his eyes 
 excitedly as he rushed on. 
 
 " It wasn't so much fun running in 
 that handicap, on the limit-mark with a 
 man twice your size, as though you were
 
 2i8 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 a Tom Thumb and the giant in a side 
 show. I knew what the crowd thought, 
 and I could hear 'em laughing across the 
 field, while we waited there for the pistol. 
 And every time we passed the stands they 
 yelled, ' Go it ! ' and things like that. Oh, 
 that was a whole lot of fun, that was ! 
 
 " But this day " he paused for a 
 
 moment, affecting a fine air of careless- 
 ness as to what he was saying, and tossed 
 his running-things into the locker — " this 
 day," he repeated, "I was as good as 
 any of 'em. I ran and I won, and I won 
 from scratch. It was a queer crowd 
 there that day, muckers and all, strag- 
 gling along the track. But they were 
 mine, all mine, and the yells were 
 mine, and the look of the men coming 
 back toward me when I began to move 
 up round the lower turn, and the little 
 brush as I passed 'em, and the tape there 
 across the track, with nobody in front, 
 and the knowing, all at once, that I had 
 'em beaten and nothing on earth could 
 stop me — that was mine, all mine ! " 
 The little man caught himself and
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 219 
 
 Stopped. " I'm no wonder, you know," 
 he said ; " I know that. But that thing's 
 done, and you can put your finger on it. 
 And they can't take that away from me, 
 can they? That's mine." 
 
 " You're right," assented Halloway, 
 smiHng to himself as he thought of the 
 many times that he had done what the 
 httle man had done but once, and of the 
 mantelpiece lined with cups in his room 
 at home which he had quite forgotten 
 these many months ; " they can't take that 
 away." 
 
 They left the stuffy locker-room and 
 walked together down the old wooden 
 stairs. The warm spring sun was still 
 bright, and Halloway shook his shoulders 
 and took a deep breath as they came into 
 the open and he felt the gay flutter and 
 patter of the avenue only half a block 
 away. But the little man stared straight 
 ahead of him, and a tired look crossed his 
 eyes. 
 
 " No," he echoed ; " they can't take that 
 away. But this — " he swept his hand 
 out bitterly toward the walls across the
 
 220 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 street, toward the wilderness of brick, and 
 the dull, persistent roar of the city that 
 hemmed them in — " this can take away 
 something. It's an alarm-clock jerks you 
 into it, — when you've forgotten, — and it's 
 a desk and an electric light over your 
 head when the sun is shining outside in 
 the morning, and it's hanging on to a 
 strap in the ' L ' train with the crowd 
 reading the murders and suicides in the 
 papers going home. And then — it's the 
 boarding-house again and the people — 
 and nobody speaks your language and no- 
 body can understand. I come up here 
 every afternoon, — it seems as though you 
 ought to hang on to it somehow, — but it 
 goes — it keeps a-going — and I can't make 
 it feel the same." 
 
 They had just reached the avenue now, 
 and, as the little man's voice ran down 
 and paused, Halloway took his arm — 
 and very thin and queer it felt, too, 
 against his own solid one — and swung 
 him along uptown. 
 
 " All you want is a little vacation," he 
 said. " Work is an awful bore."
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 221 
 
 " Oh, it isn't that ! " cried the little man. 
 " It isn't the work ; it's the forgetting. 
 It's when you begin to lose interest. It's 
 when you don't care whether you're stoop- 
 shouldered or straight, when you don't 
 care whether you've got any legs or not, 
 when you think more of whether your 
 trousers are pressed than whether the legs 
 are right inside 'em. Oh, it's when you 
 get to be just a clothes-figure with a 
 thinking-machine on top, and let all the 
 poetry in your body shrivel up and die! 
 And your arms, and all the pull and 
 thrust in 'em, and your legs, and all the 
 spring and stride in 'em, become just bag- 
 gage to carry around. You've run — you 
 know what it is — just the way your feet 
 catch the ground and swing you on, just 
 the way a piece of level meadow where 
 the grass is short, or a smooth stretch of 
 soft roadway, will call out to you ! 
 
 " And yet I've seen the day," said the 
 little man, solemnly — " I've seen the day 
 when I've envied some old bag of bones, 
 with two feet in the grave, just because 
 he rode up the Sound every night in a
 
 222 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 steam-yacht; or some fat-faced elephant, 
 who'd die of apoplexy if he ran a block, 
 just because, when I was walking uptown 
 some hot night after work, I'd meet him 
 blowing down the avenue in an automo- 
 bile — just in from the country, with a lit- 
 tle tan on his face ! " 
 
 Halloway stopped suddenly and looked 
 down at the little man. 
 
 " By the way," he said, " what have — 
 have you got to do anything next Sun- 
 day? I mean " He was thinking of 
 
 their place on the Sound, and the saddle- 
 horses in the stable, and the links just 
 beyond the woods, and the knockabout 
 floating in the cove — and that he didn't 
 even know the little man's name. " I 
 mean," stammered Halloway, " we'll talk 
 it over — and — and — come along in and 
 have a little snifter." 
 
 " Thank you— but I don't believe " 
 
 " Oh, yes, you do," laughed Halloway. 
 " It'll do you good." And he pushed the 
 little man in ahead of him — into a room 
 the windows of which opened on the 
 Avenue, and where the men, sitting at
 
 THE MEN THEY USED TO BE 223 
 
 little tables, to whom Hallo way nodded, 
 glanced inquiringly at his companion, as 
 though to ask who that might be he had 
 in tow, with the faded face and the spec- 
 tacles and the quaint store-clothes. Hal- 
 loway tapped a bell and gave the orders, 
 and, dropping into a broad-armed wicker 
 chair, gazed out at the bright stream of 
 carriages and hansoms and the people 
 flowing by. For a moment they sat in 
 silence, and then he turned toward the 
 little man and then looked back, with a 
 shrug of the shoulders, into the street. 
 
 " There they are," he said, " and there 
 they'll always be, with their dinners and 
 their huzz-biizz and their theaters and the 
 rest. And here we are, in the cage, and 
 we can't get out. And we've got to become 
 pillars of society and all that — and re- 
 member that we aren't antelopes or 
 Indians — and forget for a good many 
 hours each day that there's sunshine and 
 blue water and a wind blowing, some- 
 where, across the moor, and things like 
 that. And they'll never learn to speak 
 our language, and we've got to learn to
 
 224 A BREAK IN TRAINING 
 
 speak theirs. And — " Halloway smiled 
 and shrugged his shoulders slightly — " it 
 isn't such a bad one, either, when you get 
 used to it; and the funny part is — the 
 funny part is, how quick you do." He 
 reached for his glass and twirled the stem 
 slowly between his fingers. 
 
 " We're getting old," said he, and he 
 smiled as he thought of his own freshness 
 and lazy strength ; of his father as he 
 looked seated in his club window, ruddy, 
 solidly powerful, and good-humoredly at 
 ease; of his grandfather, smartest of the 
 three in a way — gaunt, fine, erect, taking 
 his hour each morning on the bridle-path 
 in the park. " We're getting old," 
 repeated Halloway, slowly, and the 
 bloom's going ; but we'll hang on to what 
 we have left, and — and here's to the men 
 we once were! " 
 
 The little man stared hard at Halloway, 
 and raised his glass with a kind of timid 
 smile. 
 
 " Sir, to you ! " he said gravely. " ' The 
 men we once were ! ' " 
 
 THE END
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 NOV 6 
 
 979 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CAYLORD 
 
 
 
 FRINTEO IN U.S.A.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 602 802 1 
 
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