Book: The Dozen from Lakerim

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THE DOZEN FROM LAKERIM

By RUPERT HUGHES

Author of "The Lakerim Athletic Club"

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C.M. RELYEA

1899.







TO THE BEST
*Father*
A BOY EVER HAD
(EXCEPT POSSIBLY YOURS)
BELONGS THE DEDICATION OF THIS STORY
OF LIFE AT AN ACADEMY,
SINCE HIS GOODNESS ENABLED ME
TO KNOW IT AND WRITE IT




NOTE


About half of this book was published serially in "St. Nicholas." The
rest of it is here printed for the first time. If in this story of
life at a preparatory school I have neglected to say very much about
books and studies, and have stuck to far less interesting matters,
such as the games and gambols that while away the dull hours between
classes, I hope my readers will graciously forgive the omission.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


IT WAS EVIDENT THAT A SEVERE STRUGGLE HAD TAKEN PLACE

"STOP THE TRAIN AND WAIT FOR ME. I'M GOING TO KINGSTON, TOO!"

TUG IS TREATED TO A LITTLE SURPRISE-PARTY

QUIZ LEARNED TO SHOOT THE HILLS AT A BREATHLESS RATE

JUMBO SAW A PAIR OF FLASHING EYES GLARING AT HIM OVER THE COVERLET

PRETTY AND ENID

THE CROSS-COUNTRY RUN

THE BOXING-MATCH

TIED UP LIKE DUMMIES IN SACKS

"STRIKER--OUT!"

BURNING THE BOOKS




THE DOZEN FROM LAKERIM




I


Some people think it great fun to build a house of cards slowly and
anxiously, and then knock it to pieces with one little snip of the
finger. Or to fix up a snow man in fine style and watch a sudden thaw
melt him out of sight. Or to write a name carefully, like a copy-book,
and with many curlicues, in the wet sand, and then scamper off and let
the first high wave smooth it away as a boy's sponge wipes from his
slate some such marvelous statement as, 12 x 12 = 120, or 384 / 16
gives a "koshunt" of 25. When such things are erased it doesn't much
matter; but there are occasions when it hurts to have Father Time come
along and blot out the work you have taken great pains with and have
put your heart into. Twelve young gentlemen in the town of Lakerim
were feeling decidedly blue over just such an occasion.

You may not find the town of Lakerim on the map in your geography. And
yet it was very well known to the people that lived in it. And the
Lakerim Athletic Club was very well known to those same people. And
the Lakerim Athletic Club, or, at least the twelve founders of the
club, were as blue as the June sky, because it seemed to them that
Father Time--old Granddaddy Longlegs that he is--was playing a mean
trick on them.

For hadn't they given all their brain and muscle to building up an
athletic club that should be a credit to the town and a terror to
outsiders! And hadn't they given up every free hour for two years to
working like Trojans? though, for that matter, who ever heard of
any work the Trojans ever did that amounted to anything--except the
spending of ten years in getting themselves badly defeated by a big
wooden hobby-horse?

But while all of the Dozen were deep in the dumps, and had their brows
tied up like a neglected fish-line, the loudest complaint was made,
of course, by the one who had done the least work in building up the
club--a lazybones who had been born tired, and had spent most of his
young life in industriously earning for himself the name of "Sleepy."

"It's a dad-ratted shame," growled he, "for you fellows to go and
leave the club in the lurch this way, after all the trouble we have
had organizing it."

"Yes," assented another, who was called "B.J." because he had jumped
from a high bridge once too often, and who read wild Western romances
more than was good for his peace of mind or his conversation; "it kind
of looks as if you fellows were renegades to the cause."

None of the Twelve knew exactly what a renegade was, but it sounded
unpleasant, and the men to whom the term was applied lost their
tempers, and volunteered to clean out the club-room where they all sat
for two cents.

But the offenders either thought they could have more fun for less
money, or hadn't the money, for they changed their tune, and the
debate went on in a more peaceful manner.

The trouble was this: Some of you who are up on the important works of
history may have heard how these twelve youth of the High School at
Lakerim organized themselves into an athletic club that won many
victories, and how they begged, borrowed, and earned enough money to
build themselves a club-house after a year of hard work and harder
play.

Well, now, after they had gone to all this trouble and all this
expense, and had enjoyed the fruits of their labors barely a year, lo
and behold, one third of the Dozen were planning to desert the club,
leave the town, and take their good muscles to another town, where
there was an academy! The worst of it was that this academy was the
very one that had worked hardest to keep the Lakerim Athletic
Club from being admitted into the league known as the Tri-State
Interscholastic.

And now that the Lakerim Club had forced its way into the League, and
had won the pennant the very first year, it seemed hard that some of
the most valuable of the Lakerimmers should even consider joining
forces with a rival. The president of the club himself was one of
the deserters; and the rest of the Dozen grew very bitter, and the
arguments often reached a point where it needed only one word more to
bring on a scrimmage--a scrimmage that would make a lively football
game seem tame by comparison.

And now the president, or "Tug," as he was always called, had been
baited long enough. He rose to his feet and proceeded to deliver an
oration with all the fervor of a Fourth-of-July orator making the
eagle scream.

"I want you fellows to understand once for all," he cried, "that
no one loves the Lakerim Athletic Club more than I do, or is more
patriotic toward it. But now that I have graduated from the High
School, I can't consider that I know everything that is to be known.
There are one or two things to learn yet, and I intend to go to a
preparatory school, and then through college; and the best thing you
follows can do is to make your plans to do the same thing. Well, now,
seeing that my mind is made up to go to college, and seeing that
I've got to go to some preparatory school, and seeing there is no
preparatory school in Lakerim, and seeing that I have therefore got
to go to some other town, and seeing that at Kingston there is a fine
preparatory school, and seeing that I want to have some sort of a show
in athletics, and seeing that the Athletic Association of the Kingston
Academy has been kind enough to specially invite three of us fellows
to go there--why, seeing all this, I don't see that there is any
kick coming to you fellows if we three fellows take advantage of our
opportunities like sensible people; and the best advice I can give
you is to make up your minds, and make up your fathers' and mothers'
minds, to come along to Kingston Academy with us. Then there won't be
any talk about our being traitors to the Dozen, for we'll just pick
the Dozen up bodily and carry it over to Kingston! The new members
we've elected can take care of the club and the club-house."

Tug sat down amid a silence that was more complimentary than the
wildest applause; for he had done what few orators do: he had set his
audience to thinking. Only one of the Twelve had a remark to make for
some time, and that was a small-framed, big-spectacled gnome called
"History." He leaned over and said to his elbow-companion, "Bobbles":

"Tug is a regular Demoskenes!"

"Who's Demoskenes?" whispered Bobbles.

"Why, don't you remember him?" said History, proudly. "He was the
fellow that used to fill his mouth full of pebbles before he talked."

"I'll bet he would have choked on some of your big words, though,
History," growled a little fellow called "Jumbo."

But the man at his side, known to fame as "Punk," broke in with a
crushing:

"Aw, let up on that old Dutchman of a Demoskenes, and let's talk
business."

So they all got their heads together again and discussed their affairs
with the solemnity due to their importance. They talked till the
janitor went round lighting up the club-house, which reminded them
that they were keeping dinner waiting at their various homes. Then
they strolled along home. They met again and again; for the fate of
the club was a serious matter to them, and the fate of the Dozen was
a still more serious matter, because the Dozen had existed before the
club or the club-house, and their hearts ached at the mere thought of
breaking up the old and dear associations that had grown up around
their partnership in many an hour of victory and defeat.

But where there are many souls there are many minds, and it seemed
impossible to keep the Twelve together for another year. It was
settled that Tug and Jumbo and Punk should accept the flattering
invitation of the Kingston Athletic Association, and their parents
were glad enough to have them go, seeing that Kingston was an academy
of excellent standing.

History was also to be there, for his learning had won him a free
scholarship in a competitive examination. B.J., "Quiz," and Bobbles
were to be sent to other academies--to Charleston, to Troy, and to
Greenville; but they made life miserable for their fathers and mothers
with their pleadings, until they, too, were permitted to join their
fellows at Kingston.

Sleepy was the only one that did not want to go, and he insisted that
he had learned all that was necessary for his purpose in life; that he
simply could not endure the thought of laboring over books any
longer. But just as the Dozen had resigned themselves to losing the
companionship of Sleepy (he was a good man to crack jokes about, if
for no other reason), Sleepy's parents announced to him that his
decision was not final, and that, whether or not he wanted to go, go
he should. And then there were eight.

The handsome and fashionable young Dozener, known to his friends
as Edward Parker, and to fame as "Pretty," was won over with much
difficulty. He had completely made up his mind to attend the Troy
Latin School--not because he loved Latin, but because Troy was the
seat of much social gaiety, and because there was a large seminary for
girls in that town. He was, however, at length cajoled into consenting
to pitch his tent at Kingston by the diplomatic Jumbo, who told him
that the girls at Kingston were the prettiest in three States. And
then there were nine.

The Phillips twins, "Reddy" and "Heady," were the next source of
trouble, for they had recently indulged in an unusually violent
squabble, even for them, and each had vowed that he would never
speak to the other again, and would sooner die than go to the same
boarding-school. The father of this fiery couple knew that the boys
really loved each other dearly at the bottom of their hearts, and
decided to teach them how much they truly cared for each other; so
he yielded to their prayer that they be allowed to go to different
academies. The boys, in high glee, tossed up a penny to decide which
should go with the Dozen to Kingston, and which should go to the
Brownsville School for Boys. Reddy won Kingston, and rejoiced greatly.
But though Heady was so blue that his brick-colored hair was almost
dyed, nothing could persuade him to "tag along after his brother," as
he phrased it. And so there were ten.

The deepest grief of the Dozen was the plight of the beloved giant,
"Sawed-Off." There seemed to be no possible way of getting him to
Kingston, much as they thought of his big muscles, and more us they
thought of his big heart. His sworn pal, the tiny Jumbo, was well nigh
distracted at the thought of severing their two knitted hearts; but
Sawed-Off's father was dead, and his mother was too poor to pay for
his schooling, so they gave him up for lost, not without aching at the
heart, and even a little dampness at the eyelids.

Heady was the first to leave town. He slipped away on an early morning
train without telling any one, for he felt very much ashamed of his
stubbornness; and he and his brother shook hands with each other as
nervously as two prize-fighters.

A few days later the five sixths of the Dozen that were booked
for Kingston stood on the crowded platform of the Lakerim
railroad-station, bidding good-by to all the parents they had, and all
the friends. All of them had paid long calls on their best girls
the evening before, and exchanged photographs and locks of hair and
various keepsakes more or less sentimental and altogether useless. So,
now that they were in public, they all shook hands very formally: Tug
with a girl several years older than he; Pretty with the beautiful
Enid; Quiz with the fickle Cecily Brown; bashful Bobbles with the
bouncing Betsy; B.J. with a girl who had as many freckles as B.J. had
had imaginary encounters with the bandits who had tried to steal her;
the unwilling Sleepy with a lively young woman who broke his heart by
congratulating him on being able to go to Kingston; tiny Jumbo with
plump Carrie Shields, whom he had once fished out of the water;
and Reddy with the girl over whom he and his brother had had their
bitterest quarrels, and who could not for the life of her tell which
one she liked the better.

[Illustration: STOP THE TRAIN AND WAIT FOR ME, I'M GOING TO KINGSTON,
TOO!]

But there was one very little girl in the crowd whose greatest sorrow,
strangely enough, was the fact that she had no one to bid good-by
to, since her dearest friend, the huge Sawed-Off, was not to go to
Kingston.

Just as the engine began to ring its warning bell, and the conductor
to wave the people aboard, there was a loud clatter of hoofs, and the
rickety old Lakerim carryall came dashing up, drawn by the lively
horses Sawed-Off had once saved from destroying themselves and the
Dozen in one fell swoop down a steep hill. The carryall lurched up to
the station came to a sudden stop, and out bounced--who but Sawed-Off
himself, loaded down with bundles, and yelling at the top of his
voice:

"Stop the train and wait for me. I'm going to Kingston, too!"




II


There was just time to dump his trunk into the baggage-car, and bundle
him and his bundles on to the platform, before the train steamed away;
and the eleven Lakerimmers were so busy waving farewell to the waving
and farewelling crowd at the station that it was some minutes before
they could find time to learn how Sawed-Off came to be among them.
When he explained that he had made arrangements to work his way
through the Academy, they took no thought for the hard struggle in
front of him, they were so glad to have him along. Jumbo and he sat
with their arms around each other all the way to Kingston, their
hearts too full for anything but an occasional "Hooray!"

The journey to Kingston brought no adventures with it--except that
History, of course, had lost his spectacles and his ticket, and had to
borrow money of Pretty to keep from being put off the train, and that
when they reached Kingston they came near forgetting Sleepy entirely,
for he had curled up in a seat, and was reeling off slumber at a
faster rate than the train reeled off miles.

The first few days at Kingston were so busily filled with entrance
examinations and selection of rooms and the harder selection of
room-mates and other furniture that the Dozen saw little of each
other, except as they crunched by along the gravel walks of the campus
or met for a hasty meal in the dining-hall. This dining-hall, by the
way, was managed by an estimable widow named Mrs. Slaughter, and of
course the boys called it the "Slaughter-house," a name not so far
from the truth, when one considers the way large, tough roasts of beef
and tons of soggy corned beef were massacred by the students.

It might be a good idea to insert here a little snap shot of Kingston
Academy. The town itself was a moth-eaten old village that claimed
a thousand inhabitants, but could never have mustered that number
without counting in all the sleepy horses, mules, cows, and pet dogs
that roamed the streets like the rest of the inhabitants. The chief
industry of the people of Kingston seemed to be that of selling
school-books, mince-pies, and other necessaries of life to the boys at
the Academy. The grown young men of the town spent their lives trying
to get away to some other cities. The younger youth of the town spent
their lives trying to interfere with the pleasures of the Kingston
academicians. So there were many of the old-time "town-and-gown"
squabbles; and it was well for the health of the Kingston Academy boys
that they rarely went around town except in groups of two or three;
and it was very bad for the health of any of the town fellows if they
happened to be caught within the Academy grounds.

The result of being situated in a half-dead village, which was neither
loved nor loving, did not make life at the Academy tame, but quite the
opposite; for the boys were forced to find their whole entertainment
in the Academy life, and in one another, and the campus was therefore
a little republic in itself--a Utopia. Like every other republic, it
had its cliques and its struggles, its victories and its defeats, its
friendships and its enmities, and everything else that makes life
lively and lifelike.

The campus was beautiful enough and large enough to accommodate its
citizens handsomely. Its trees were many and tall, venerable old
monarchs with foliage like tents for shade and comfort to any little
groups that cared to lounge upon the mossy divans beneath. The grounds
were spacious enough to furnish not only football and baseball fields
and tennis-courts, but meadows where wild flowers grew in the spring,
and a little lake where the ice grew in the winter. Miles away--just
enough to make a good "Sabbath day's journey"--was a wonderful region
called the "Ledges," where glaciers had once resided, and left huge
boulders, scratched and scarred. As Jumbo put it, it seemed, from
the chasms and caves and curious distortions of stone and soil, that
"nature must have once had a fit there.".

Most of the buildings of the Academy looked nearly old enough to have
been also deposited there by the primeval glaciers, but they were huge
and comfortable, and so many colonies of boys had romped and ruminated
there, and so much laughter and so much lore had soaked into the old
walls, that they were pleasanter than any newer and more gorgeous
architecture could possibly be. They were homely in the better as well
as the worse sense.

But this is more than enough description, and you must imagine for
yourselves how the Lakerim eleven, often as they thought of home, and
homesick as they were in spite of themselves now and then, rejoiced
in being thrown on their own resources, and made somewhat independent
citizens in a little country of their own. Unwilling to make
selections among themselves, more unwilling to select room-mates from
the other students (the "foreigners," as the Lakerimmers called them),
they drew lots for one another, and the lots decided that they should
room together thus: Tug and Punk were on the ground floor of the
building known as South College, in room No. 2; in the room just over
them were Quiz and Pretty; and on the same floor, at the back of
the building, were Bobbles and Reddy (Reddy insisted upon this room
because it had a third bedroom off its study-room; while, of course,
he never expected to see Heady there, and didn't much care, of course,
whether he came or not, still, a fellow never can tell, you know); on
the same floor were B.J. and Jumbo. Jumbo did not stoop to flatter
B.J. by pretending that he would not have preferred Sawed-Off for
his room-mate; but Sawed-Off was working his way through, and the
principal of the Academy had offered to help him out, not only with a
free scholarship, but with a free room, as well, in Middle College, an
old building which had the gymnasium on the first floor, the chapel on
the second, and in the loft a single store-room fixed up as a bedroom.

The lots the fellows drew seemed to be in a joking mood when they
selected History and Sleepy for room-mates--the hardest student and
the softest, not only of the Dozen, but of the whole Academy. Sleepy
had been too lazy to pay much heed when the diplomatic History had
suggested their choosing room No. 13 for theirs, and he assented
languidly. History had said that it was the brightest and sunniest
room in the building, and if there was one thing that Sleepy loved
almost better than baseball, it was a good snooze in the sun after he
had worked hard stowing away any of the three meals. His heart was
broken, however, when he learned that the room chosen by the wily
History was on the top floor, with three long flights to climb. After
that you could never convince him that thirteen was not an unlucky
number.

The Lakerimmers had thus managed quietly to ensconce themselves, all
except Sawed-Off, in one building; and it was just as well, perhaps,
that they did so establish themselves in a stronghold of their own,
for they clung together so steadfastly that there was soon a deal of
jealousy among the other students toward them, and all the factions
combined together to try to keep the Lakerimmers from cabbaging any of
the good things of academy life.

There was a craze of skylarking the first few weeks after the school
opened. Almost every day one of the Lakerimmers would come back from
his classes to find his room "stacked"--a word that exactly expresses
its meaning. There is something particularly discouraging in going to
your room late in the evening, your mind made up to a comfortable hour
of reading on a divan covered with cushions made by your best girls,
only to find the divan placed in the middle of the bed, with a bureau
and a bookcase stuck on top of it, a few chairs and a pet bulldog tied
in the middle of the mix-up, and a mirror and a well-filled bowl of
water so fixed on the top of the heap that it is well-nigh impossible
to move any one of the articles without cracking the looking-glass or
dousing yourself with the water. The Lakerimmers tried retaliation for
a time; but the pleasure of stacking another man's room was not half
so great as the misery of unstacking one's own room, and they finally
decided to keep two or three of the men always on guard in the
building.

There was a rage for hazing, too, the first few weeks; and as the
Lakerimmers were all new men in the Academy, they were considered
particularly good candidates for various degrees of torment. Hazing
was strictly against the rules of the Academy, but the teachers could
not be everywhere at once, and had something to do besides prowl
around the dark corners of the campus at all hours of the night. Some
of the men furiously resisted the efforts to haze them; but when they
once learned that their efforts were vain, and had perforce to submit,
none of them were mean enough to peach on their tormentors after the
damage was done. The Lakerimmers, however, decided to resist force
with force, and stuck by each other so closely, and barricaded their
doors so firmly at night, when they must necessarily separate,
that time went on without any of them being subjected to any other
indignities than the guying of the other Kingstonians.

Sawed-Off had so much and such hard work to do after school hours
that the whole Academy respected him too much to attempt to haze him,
though he roomed alone in the old Middle College. Besides, his size
was such that nobody cared to be the first one to lay hand on him.

* * * * *

There was just one blot on the happiness of the Dozen at Kingston.
Tug and Punk and Jumbo had started the whole migration from Lakerim
because they had been invited by the Kingston Athletic Association to
join forces with the Academy. The magnificent game of football these
three men had played in the last two years had been the cause of this
invitation, and they had come with glowing dreams of new worlds to
conquer. What was their pain and disgust to find that the captain of
the Kingston team, elected before they came, had decided that he had
good cause for jealousy of Tug, and had decided that, since Tug would
probably win all his old laurels away from him if he once admitted him
to the eleven, the only way to retain those laurels was to keep Tug
off the team. When the Lakerim three, therefore, appeared on the field
as candidates for the eleven, they were assigned to the second or
scrub team. (The first team was generally called the "varsity," though
of course it only represented an academy.)

The Lakerim three, though disappointed at first, determined to show
their respect for discipline, and to earn their way; so they submitted
meekly, and played the best game they could on the scrub. When the
varsity captain, Clayton by name, criticized their playing in a
way that was brutal,--not because it was frank, but because it was
unjust,--they swallowed the poison as quietly as they could, and went
back into the game determined not to repeat the slip that had brought
upon them such a deluge of abuse.

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