The Neer-Do-Well | Page 2

shoulders to the mob, but, though they met with no
open resistance, they might as well have tried to dislodge a thicket of
saplings. To-night football was king.
Out through the crowd came a score of deep-chested young men
moving together as if to resist an attack, whereupon a mighty roar went
up. The cheer-leader increased his antics, and the barking yell changed
to a measured chant, to the time of which the army marched down the
street until the twenty athletes dodged in through the revolving doors of
a cafe, leaving Broadway rocking with the tumult.
All the city was football-mad, it seemed, for no sooner had the
new-comers entered the restaurant than the diners rose to wave napkins
or to cheer. Men stepped upon chairs and craned for a better sight of
them; women raised their voices in eager questioning. A gentleman in
evening dress pointed out the leader of the squad to his companions,

explaining:
"That is Anthony--the big chap. He's Darwin K. Anthony's son. You've
heard about the Anthony bill at Albany?"
"Yes, and I saw this fellow play football four years ago. Say! That was
a game."
"He's a worthless sort of chap, isn't he?" remarked one of the women,
when the squad had disappeared up the stairs.
"Just a rich man's son, that's all. But he certainly could play football."
"Didn't I read that he had been sent to jail recently?"
"No doubt. He was given thirty days."
"What! in PRISON?" questioned another, in a shocked voice.
"Only for speeding. It was his third offence, and his father let him take
his medicine."
"How cruel!"
"Old man Anthony doesn't care for this sort of thing. He's right, too. All
this young fellow is good for is to spend money."
Up in the banquet-hall, however, it was evident that Kirk Anthony was
more highly esteemed by his mates than by the public at large. He was
their hero, in fact, and in a way he deserved it. For three years before
his graduation he had been the heart and sinew of the university team,
and for the four years following he had coached them, preferring the
life of an athletic trainer to the career his father had offered him. And
he had done his chosen work well.
Only three weeks prior to the hard gruel of the great game the eleven
had received a blow that had left its supporters dazed and despairing.
There had been a scandal, of which the public had heard little and the
students scarcely more, resulting in the expulsion of the five best
players of the team. The crisis might have daunted the most resourceful
of men, yet Anthony had proved equal to it. For twenty-one days he
had labored like a real general, spending his nights alone with diagrams
and little dummies on a miniature gridiron, his days in careful coaching.
He had taken a huge, ungainly Nova Scotian lad named Ringold for
centre; he had placed a square-jawed, tow-headed boy from Duluth in
the line; he had selected a high-strung, unseasoned chap, who for two
years had been eating his heart out on the side-lines, and made him into
a quarter-back.
Then he had driven them all with the cruelty of a Cossack captain; and

when at last the dusk of this November day had settled, new football
history had been made. The world had seen a strange team snatch
victory from defeat, and not one of all the thirty thousand onlookers but
knew to whom the credit belonged. It had been a tremendous spectacle,
and when the final whistle blew for the multitude to come roaring down
across the field, the cohorts had paid homage to Kirk Anthony, the
weary coach to whom they knew the honor belonged.
Of course this fervid enthusiasm and hero-worship was all very
immature, very foolish, as the general public acknowledged after it had
taken time to cool off. Yet there was something appealing about it, after
all. At any rate, the press deemed the public sufficiently interested in
the subject to warrant giving it considerable prominence, and the name
of Darwin K. Anthony's son was published far and wide.
Naturally, the newspapers gave the young man's story as well as a
history of the game. They told of his disagreement with his father; of
the Anthony anti-football bill which the old man in his rage had driven
through the legislature and up to the Governor himself. Some of them
even printed a rehash of the railroad man's famous magazine attack on
the modern college, in which he all but cited his own son as an example
of the havoc wrought by present- day university methods. The elder
Anthony's wealth and position made it good copy. The yellow journals
liked it immensely, and, strangely