The Spirit of the Leader/Chapter 7
THE EDITORIAL home of the Northfield Breeze was a corner room on the top floor of the Northfield High School. The room, tucked into an out-of-the-way wing of the building, had the remote appearance of an architectural afterthought. A stranger, strolling through the corridors, might have passed the doorway with the impression that the threshold probably led to a storage chamber for janitor's supplies. It was a dull and uninviting doorway.
But once inside the room one would have recognized the calling of the place. Three scarred tables held implements that possessed an editorial look—ancient type-shears loose on their hinges, and disordered piles of school papers and magazines. Drawings that had had their day of renown in the school weekly hung framed upon the walls; and there was also a well-preserved letter of advice that a famed novelist had once written to a Breeze staff. That letter was each succeeding editor's heirloom, to be duly pondered and handed down, in time, to his successor. A dictionary on a stand was near the tables, a filled bookcase stood against one wall, and between two windows was a rack holding newspapers to which the school had subscribed. Four newspapers hung suspended from rods—the New York Times, the Chicago Daily News, the Kansas City Star and the Philadelphia Ledger.
At one of the windows Bristow and Praska stood staring out at a stretch of vacant building lots that lay parallel with the rear of the school building. Praska was the first to speak.
"If something isn't done," he said, "it will be the same story that it was three years ago. Northfield won't have a chance."
Bristow pursed his lips. "Three years ago the election came right after that outbreak of typhoid fever. Everybody was taking sides on the question of pure water. Nobody was thinking about an athletic field for the high school. Scarcely anybody bothered to vote yes or no on the question of buying the lots back there."
"It will be the same this year," said Praska. "This time everybody is interested in Commissioner Sloan. His side is saying that the parks and public improvements were never kept up better than he has kept them. The other side is saying that he's done nothing but make a lot of soft jobs for his family at public expense. Every night there are street corner meetings. Nobody says a word about the referendum on the high school field. It's just a side issue. It's up to us to see that it stops being a side issue."
Bristow, his lips still pursed, whistled a preoccupied, aimless, almost silent tune.
"We've been to the editor of the Morning Herald." Praska went on, "and we've had a talk with the editor of the Evening Star. We asked them to get behind the athletic field and boost it. But both papers are attacking Commissioner Sloan. They won't go off on any side issues, either. What's the result? They've each given us one little item buried on an inside page—a couple of inches in each paper. That won't get us any place. There's only one road left. We've got to make our fight in the Breeze."
"We won't reach much of the public," said Bristow.
"We'll reach the parents of our eight hundred students. Less than eight hundred voters bothered to say either yes or no three years ago."
Bristow, still whistling that almost soundless tune, walked to the middle table of the three, and stood there toying with the clipping shears.
"If the Breeze goes into this," he said abruptly, "it's going to be mighty hard work."
"Everything's hard," said Praska seriously, "until it's done."
Abruptly Bristow dropped the shears.
"There was a time," he said, "when I didn't believe in a school paper's going into this sort of thing—but I've changed my mind. You can count on the Breeze to go with you all the way. Something Mr. Banning said in civics last week has started me thinking. He said that half the fellows in the senior class would cast a vote in the next election for Governor of this State. It gave me a jolt to think how close a lot of us were—you and me, for instance—to American citizenship. Then he said we don't keep in touch with the people who have graduated from this school. I think I know what he meant by that. He meant that whenever the school had a fight on it ought to call on its graduates for help. It's going to be a fight for that athletic field, and we're going to call on ours. First crack out of the box we ought to call on Carlos Dix."
"Fine!" cried Praska.
Bristow grinned. "I thought that would get you. You've been a Carlos Dix worshipper ever since we were in the sixth grade. I'll bet there was a time you dreamed of him at night."
"I'm still for him," Praska said honestly. "He was the best quarterback Northfield ever had, and he made a record on the State University team."
"Oh, he had a good head."
"He had something more," Praska said sharply "Not many high school letter fellows ever took the trouble to coach a grammar school team as he coached ours. After he went to the University he wrote us a couple of times and suggested plays. He's kept in touch with us ever since he came back and opened his law office. He's come out to the high school games when he could and"
"Gag yourself," Bristow cut in, half in good humor, half in earnest. "When I said Dix had a good head I wasn't slamming him. What's your objection to his having a good head?"
Praska subsided. Bristow, he knew, was twisting words around. At that Bristow excelled him. He had never developed the knack of deft, quick speech. Yet his mental picture of Carlos Dix was as clear and as strong as it had ever been in grammar school days—a keen, alert man, generous, public-spirited, and straight as a string; and he remembered that years ago Bristow had twitted him about Carlos Dix even as he twitted him now.
"Let's get back on the main line," the editor said imperturbably. "We ought to get Carlos Dix to use his head in this athletic business. He knows a lot about managing public affairs. My father says that in another year or so he'll be in the State Legislature, young as he is. Last fall he made political speeches all over the State. He's just the man to help us."
"He may be too busy," Praska suggested doubtfully. "He may not have the time for a campaign like this."
"Do your years at Northfield mean anything to you?" Bristow demanded sharply.
"Yes," Praska answered simply.
"Then if Carlos Dix is the man you say he is, the four years he spent at Northfield mean something to him. Somebody ought to go to him."
"I'll go," said Praska.
At five o'clock the next afternoon the elevator of the Union Trust Building dropped him off at the seventh floor. Carlos Dix's office was down at the end of a corridor—the type of office that would naturally be rented by a man whose future was bright but whose present demanded economy. A girl, sitting at a typewriter desk, disappeared into an inner room after Praska had given her his name. A moment later Carlos Dix came out.
"Hello, Praska," he said with a cordial handclasp. "Come in." He led the way into his private office and motioned the boy to a chair. "Just give me a minute to pick up these papers." With swift fingers he fell to banding legal looking documents into neat packets that he arranged orderly on his desk.
Praska had a momentary chance to study once more this man to whom he had long given a boy's half-hidden allegiance. Carlos Dix's build was still as rangy as when he had shrilled his signals to the Northfield eleven. His forehead was high, his hair was crisp and brown, his gray eyes looked at you openly and directly, and the ghost of a smile seemed to tug constantly at one corner of his wide, generous mouth. He had that vague something that men call magnetism. Lincoln had it. So, too, had Roosevelt.
The young lawyer snapped on the last rubber band and turned to Praska with friendly alertness. "Well, what is it?"
"It's about the election," said Praska. "We're going to try to put through the referendum for an athletic field, and we've come to you for help. Northfield hasn't forgotten you."
"I haven't forgotten Northfield," said Carlos Dix.
He walked to the wall, and stood looking at the framed picture of a football team. When he came back to his desk, it was plain from the expression on his face that his thoughts were in the past. Abruptly he aroused himself.
"What you want from me," he said, "is principally advice—right?"
"Right," said Praska.
"You've got two ways to reach people, word of mouth and the printed word. You must use the Breeze."
"We're going to. That's all been planned."
"Good. That reaches the parents of eight hundred students. You want to hammer away on two things, why the school should have an athletic field, and what it will cost. You can easily figure the cost. Go down to the Tax Assessor's office in the City Hall. Find out what figure the city puts on those lots in back of the high school for taxing purposes. Taxing value is always less than market value. In this town, add about forty per cent. to the taxing value and you'll have a fair market selling price. Then keep yelling about how little it will cost each taxpayer."
Praska had drawn pencil and paper from his pockets and was making notes.
"Now for your word of mouth campaign. Every Northfield student must do missionary work at home and with the next door neighbors. Each student must centralize on just that—his own family and the families next door. Don't spread your fire; center it on the people who know you. The athletic field is a side issue in this campaign. The whole town is caught by the ear by just one thing—will Commissioner Sloan be defeated or re-elected? Half of the people won't even bother to vote on the athletic field. If you get out a crowd who will vote 'yes,' you'll win."
Carlos Dix's voice, vibrant, sure, confident, warmed Praska through and through. As he shook hands with the lawyer in leaving, he was struck anew with the thought that only a few short years ago this man of affairs had seen little of the world except what went on in a high school classroom.
"I'm glad you came in," Carlos Dix said, "for many reasons," and Praska left with a feeling of deep inward satisfaction.
The campaign would succeed—he was sure of that. But of even greater moment to him was the fine way in which the lawyer had responded to the call of his old school.
Next morning he told Bristow the success of his errand. "Carlos Dix," he said enthusiastically, "didn't hesitate a minute. You can always count on him. Remember the first year we were in high school, the time the football team was swamped in its first game"
"O, bother Carlos Dix!" Bristow said with irritation. "Let's attend to this election. You get those tax figures and we'll begin to stir the pot. I'll do my bit. You get the rest of the school to campaign at home and among the neighbors. Just get me some figures, and I'll use them as a peg to hang up some snappy articles."
Praska got the figures that afternoon. The gray-haired chief clerk in the Tax Assessor's office took him back among the assessment books and speedily gave him the information he sought.
"I think I know what you're after," the man said. "If you high school fellows are going to try to get that athletic field, I'd buzz around and see the lawyers and the real estate men."
"Why?" Praska asked eagerly.
"Some of the people who own these lots do business through lawyers and real estate brokers. If a real estate man has a client who owns any of that property he'll help you put it over for the sake of his client. If a lawyer has a client who owns some of that property he'll lend a hand to help you put it over, too. There may be a little commission money in it for them."
Praska thanked the man and walked out into the rotunda of the City Hall. The list he had in his pocket showed that B. B. Ballinger, Northfield's leading real estate broker, owned six of the lots in the rear of the high school. There would be at least one real estate man, he thought, who would quickly join in the school's campaign.
But when he told this to Bristow, the editor looked at him with a sudden, speculative smile. "Ballinger! Carlos Dix is his lawyer. I wonder if Carlos is in this with us to get his little commission money."
"Carlos Dix is in this," Praska said indignantly, "to help Northfield. Anyway, there wouldn't be anything wrong in it if he wanted to help Mr. Ballinger sell some lots to the town."
Bristow grinned. "Stirred you up, didn't I? Thought I'd get you with that. But just between you and me, George, if Carlos jumped right into this because he wanted to help Mr. Ballinger it would be a whole lot more honest if he'd come out in the open and say so."
"Well—" Praska began weakly, and stopped. There was nothing he could think of to say.
Bristow opened his campaign in the next issue of the Breeze:
Northfield's Opportunity
Every person, every community, every school is judged by two standards—the things done and the things left undone. In the coming election Northfield has an opportunity to supply a need of Northfield High School.
The town had the opportunity once before, but did not see it. It must not be said again that Northfield was blind to its chance.
It will cost, it is estimated, about $25,000 for an athletic field. Is this too much? It all depends upon what the town will get for its $25,000. A sick man is usually willing to give all his money to regain his health. Doctors say that it is cheaper to stay well than to spend money for cures. Northfield speaks of that field as an athletic field, but it would be better, perhaps, to call it a "health field."
The old Greeks had a saying, "A sound mind in a sound body." The class-room provides a mental training field, but a basement gym is a poor body builder. Exercise should be taken in the open air. When it is taken on a school field it becomes as much a part of a school duty as study. Health marks are as important as examination marks.
Why did the Greeks insist upon a sound mind in a sound body? For the same reason that one would not store precious oil in a cracked bottle. The crack would allow the oil to leak away, and a weak body is a crack through which energy is lost. The best brains have usually gone with rugged bodies.
Northfield doesn't ask $25,000 merely for an athletic field. It asks for an athletic field plus—and the plus is health.
"That," Bristow said confidently, "is something that ought to strike home."
Praska was sure that it would bring results. And yet, before two days were gone, it was apparent that the article had created scarcely a ripple. The school itself, the party most vitally interested, was not impressed. Bristow was disappointed.
"You ought to go down and see Carlos Dix again," he told Praska. "We're slipping up some place. We're not getting the most out of what we're doing. Dix may be able to put us on the right track. He'll try hard enough if he's in this to sell lots for Mr. Ballinger."
Praska went again to the office on the seventh floor of the Union Trust building, carrying with him a memory of Bristow's teasing, exasperating grin. But all doubts fled as he sat again beside the lawyer's desk. It did not seem possible that those candid eyes, that frank smile, could mask a purpose other than absolute school loyalty.
"I gave you the right road," the lawyer said frankly, "but I sent you up the wrong side. The first thing to do is to convince the school itself. The students cannot campaign at home unless they believe in what they're doing. Try this. Pack together your best arguments for voting for an athletic field. Word them concisely and forcefully. Give, also, brief, logical answers to any objections that have been raised. Keep the whole thing short and have it printed on small slips of paper. See to it that there is one on every student's desk. Then send out speakers from the Northfield Congress to visit each home room and discuss these arguments with the students. Let them ask questions and answer them. Hammer the arguments home. Sell them to the citizens of the school community. Then print a short article on the same lines in the next issue of the Breeze, and get the students to take the paper home, with the article marked, and sell their dads and mothers."
The solution was so simple that Praska was astounded that neither he nor Bristow had thought of it. He stood up to go.
"Keep in touch with me," Carlos Dix said. "I'm interested in this campaign for more reasons than you think."
Praska winced. What the lawyer had said might mean nothing, yet Bristow had planted the seed of a disquieting thought. There would be nothing wrong in Carlos Dix working for the school and at the same time doing service for a client. Nevertheless, the boy had built up a finespirited, wholly unselfish ideal of the man, and the mere thought of commission money in some way soiled the beauty of the picture.
Within the next two days, the argument-selling campaign went through as Carlos Dix had planned it. Perry, Lee Merritt, Hammond, Littlefield, Betty Lawton, Praska, and others went forth as a speakers' committee from the Congress to inspire the school and to rouse it to concerted action.
"The athletic field is yours," they cried, "if you'll get out and work. Take the Breeze home! See that that article is read! Try to find out if your parents will vote for the field on Election Day. Northfield is depending on you. If you fail her, she's lost. You are her soldiers and we're here to-day, on behalf of the Congress, sounding the battle cry and the charge."
The home rooms caught the enthusiasm—there could be no doubt of that. Yet two days later only seventy-two students had reported votes in favor of the field. The results were almost as disappointing as they had been before. By that time another issue of the Breeze was out with a third article, but Bristow made no boasts.
"My father," little Johnny Dunn told him, "says we have too many things now to take our minds off our studies."
"Has he read my articles?" the editor demanded.
Johnny Dunn nodded. Bristow looked crestfallen.
At noon a girl came to the cafeteria, where Praska was eating, and told him that Carlos Dix had telephoned the principal's office and had asked that he be summoned. The boy went upstairs at once.
"How are things shaping up?" the lawyer asked.
"We can find only seventy-two sure votes."
"And the election only eight days away. Son, we've got to hustle. Can you meet me at my office to-night at eight o'clock? Perhaps it will be better if you bring a couple of other fellows with you. Eight sharp."
At eight o'clock Praska was there with Bristow and with Perry King. "Sorry," said Carlos Dix. "I thought we'd be able to talk things over here, but we've got to go elsewhere."
They followed him, and Praska was conscious of how much they had come to rely upon this man's judgment and leadership.
Presently they turned in at a walk outlined with trim hedge. Bristow dug his elbow into Praska's ribs, and the president of the Northfield Congress looked at the editor inquiringly. Bristow merely smiled. And then, as Praska recognized his surroundings, an electric tingle shot him through and through. They had come to B. B. Ballinger's home.
Mr. Ballinger himself opened the door. Carlos Dix was the last one to enter the house.
"How does it look?" the real estate man asked in an undertone.
"I think we'll put it over," the lawyer answered in the same low voice.
Ordinarily Praska would not have heard either the question or the answer; but to-night every sense was sharp and alert. In the living room, where the conference was held, he was conscious of Bristow, his head tilted a little to one side, smiling inscrutably over the heads of the gathering.
"Mr. Ballinger," Carlos Dix said, "is a graduate of Northfield High. I don't think any of you knew that. He graduated years ago before the present high school was built. But his heart is still with Northfield."
"So much so," said Mr. Ballinger, "that I want to organize a committee, get after every graduate who is in town, and send him out to influence his friends to vote for the athletic field. I thought it best, though, to talk to some of the students and see how they felt about it."
"I think that's great," Perry King said at once. Bristow said not a word. Praska nodded—slowly—and saw Carlos Dix give him a sharp glance.
The discussion lasted more than an hour. In all that time Bristow did not speak. Perry was keen and animated. Praska, confused by the clashing faith and despair with which he viewed Carlos Dix, found it hard to fix his attentions on the conversation. It is agony to see a cherished ideal die!
But in the end he responded to the bright hope of the plan. Northfield's graduates would push a quiet, insistent campaign. And in the school itself the work would go on. Speeches would continue to be made in the home rooms.
"If we could only get the auditorium for a night meeting for parents of students," Perry cried suddenly. "The night before the election; just parents, no outsiders. The students making all the speeches. A meeting of those interested in the school to talk about a school need. Wouldn't that be one grand, final hurrah?"
"If you can do that," said Carlos Dix, "it would be almost a winning move."
"We can see Mr. Rue in the morning. If the Northfield Congress will back this" He looked at Praska, and Praska nodded.
The boys departed, but the lawyer remained behind. There were some personal matters, he said, that he wished to talk over with Mr. Ballinger. Praska swallowed a queer lump in his throat.
At the first corner Perry turned off and went his way whistling. Bristow and Praska walked on together in silence.
"Mr. Ballinger's lawyer," Bristow observed at last.
Praska said nothing.
"Did you hear Carlos Dix tell him he thought they'd put it over?"
Praska nodded.
"They held their voices down; they didn't think anybody'd catch what they said. It would be a nice thing for Mr. Ballinger if he could get rid of all those lots in a lump, wouldn't it? What kind of Northfield man is Carlos Dix anyway?"
Praska wet his lips. "You aren't sure"
"Oh, rats! I'm not stupid. I can smell something cheesy when it's right under my nose. What's Carlos Dix doing, talking big about his love for the school and then using us to pull Mr. Ballinger's chestnuts from the fire?"
"I don't know," Praska answered with an effort. Then, in a voice of misery he added, "I wish I did know."
"You always did make too much of a hero of him," said Bristow.
"I believe," was the report that came from Mr. Rue, "that it is entirely proper for the students to use the auditorium for a meeting to tell the needs of the school to the public."
And then came a time of activity such as Northfield had not known before. A sign, built and painted in the manual training shops, went up in the corridor facing the entrance:
Bring an Athletic Field to Northfield
Speeches! Day after day they were heard in the home rooms. The great Northfield question became "How are those at home going to vote?" "Ask dad and mother; they know," cried the Northfield Congress. It became the rallying cry of the school. During the last auditorium period of the week a student sprang from his seat as the dismissal signal was given and as the leader of the school orchestra stood ready to start the exit march.
"Everybody in on this," he yelled. "Make it snappy. Are we going to get that field?"
"Ask dad and mother!" roared eight hundred throats; "they know!"
Praska felt that one spontaneous outburst was worth a dozen speeches in the home rooms. The steady record of progress was beginning to show itself in the reports that came in. The seventy-two sure votes had become one hundred and eighty-nine, and more than two hundred parents had promised to come to the auditorium meeting. Added to that, Northfield's graduates, urged on by Mr. Ballinger and by Carlos Dix, were waging their own particular campaign. When the lawyer telephoned again that afternoon, Praska reported that the situation showed a distinct and decided improvement.
And yet, it was Betty Lawton who called to his attention an angle that had been overlooked.
"We're forgetting," she said thoughtfully, "the men and women who will be undecided about coming to the meeting until the last minute."
"You mean that we ought to have some way of reaching them right at the end?" Praska demanded. "How?"
"What do the political parties do on election day when they're trying hard to get out the vote? Don't they rush around in automobiles and bring voters to the polls?"
Praska's hands came together with a crack. "Betty, that's an idea. We ought to be able to find a few fellows who could use their father's cars that night. Now we are on the road."
A hurried call went to home rooms to prepare new lists. What students' folks would surely come to the meeting? Who were doubtful? Saturday Praska, Perry, Hammond and Betty Lawton came to the school and checked up in a silence that was broken only by the clatter of brooms and pans as the janitor and his assistants scoured the building. When the job was done they had one final collection of names—those on whom last minute pressure would have to be brought.
Monday afternoon, after classes, members of the Congress began to telephone to doubtful parents. "We need you to-night," each message ran; "you must come." At six o'clock this special pleading was at an end. Some of the parents had promised. Some were hopeless. Sixty-five homes were still doubtful—one hundred and thirty fathers and mothers controlling one hundred and thirty votes.
Praska wrote out sixty-five names and addresses for those students who had promised to report at the school at seven o'clock with cars. This done he was conscious of a dragging weariness and a gnawing doubt. He began to tremble with an acute fear that they were doomed to failure. At home he ate a hurried supper, and when he left the house his father and mother were making ready to follow him. A church tower clock was striking half-past seven when he got back to the school.
"Did the automobiles go out for their people?" he demanded of Perry King.
Perry nodded.
"How many?"
"Five. None of them has come back yet."
"Anybody—anybody here?"
Perry shook his head. Praska told himself that it was too early—told it over and over again as though forcing himself to believe in the impossible.
At twenty minutes of eight one car rolled up to the curb with three people, and promptly went off for more. Praska saw them comfortably seated in the auditorium. The place was half-filled with students. The three adults seemed pitifully out of place—only three!
Five minutes later a trickle of parents began to come through the entrance doors. Boys and girls, wearing the arm bands of the Safety Committee, took charge of them as soon as they entered the building. Praska remained out on the sidewalk, watching with fearful eyes the approaches to the school.
"If they'll only come," he said in a whisper; "if they'll only come."
And then the tide set in. From the four corners of the town they came, men and women whose interest had been aroused, whose attention had been caught, by an unexpected, insistent, compelling campaign. Some were there out of curiosity, some because their sense of appreciation and admiration had been touched. They passed Praska in ones, and twos, and half-dozens. Exultation rioted in his blood. His weariness was gone.
Perry King, panting, rushed out of the school and touched him on the arm. "George! Some of our crowd is beginning to go away. The students have more than half the seats and the crowd can't find places."
Praska made a dash for the building. "Send the Safety Committee through the aisles. Get the students into the rear of the hall. Tell them they're freezing out our guests. Hurry it." At the door of the school he met the first of those coming away. "Please stay," he cried. "There'll be seats for everybody in a moment. This is our first public meeting and I guess we're a little green at it."
"Shure, lad," said a voice, "'tis all right. We've all o' us got t' learn our tricks. Back we go—"
And back they went. The ousted students, crowding toward the rear of the auditorium, made progress confusing for a moment. Just then the school orchestra struck up a patriotic air. Once more the situation was saved. Praska came to the wings at the side of the stage, conscious all at once that his collar was wilted and hopelessly out of shape.
It had been agreed that Mr. Banning should call the meeting to order. At a quarter past eight o'clock he stepped out from the wings. A cheer came from the students packed like canned fish behind the last row of seats. He raised his hand for silence.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "you have come here to-night at the invitation of the eight hundred students of Northfield to hear Northfield plead her case. My duty will be to introduce the speakers. The students will tell their own story. It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Perry King, a member of the Northfield Congress and chairman of the Safety Committee."
Hammond said later that, from his part of the auditorium floor, Perry looked like a pinched and hungry undertaker who had come out to hang crepe. But there was nothing melancholy about Perry's address. He had decided to approach the subject from the angle of civic pride. He had a list of all the high schools of the state that possessed athletic fields, and before long he began to read them. Now and then he would pause to say, quietly: "That town is smaller than Northfield."
"Do you think," he cried at last, "that all these communities have bought athletic fields as a fad? If Northfield wanted a place for the exclusive use of the Northfield football team, or the Northfield baseball team, I wouldn't be out here to-night asking for your help. There would be no reason for the town to spend more than $20,000 just to provide a playing field for a few teams. But this field will be the home of general class athletics. Every student will exercise here and build up a reserve force of vitality. To-morrow this town decides whether Northfield High School joins the march of progress or else be known as a community that does not understand."
Praska's heart swelled. Perry, he thought, could always be counted on to come to scratch in an emergency. And then Mr. Banning was introducing Betty Lawton.
"I appeal to you to-night," she said, "on behalf of every girl who is a Northfield student. We do not ask you merely for ground on which to play; we ask you for a laboratory where sunshine and fresh air will develop alertness and vigor. The things that spell health and strength spell them the same way for the girl as they do for the boy. Have you heard about the flapper slouch?"
A laugh ran through the audience.
"The doctors," Betty said wisely, "are of the opinion that a slouching way of standing and walking is bad for the health. The girl who enjoys vigorous, outdoor exercise does not slouch. So to-morrow we ask you to vote for our field. Here in Northfield we want you to be proud of the girl who gets the sort of red in her cheeks that is supplied by nature and not by the kind that is bought in the drug stores."
There was no doubt that Betty had struck a human and a humorous note. The audience had warmed up noticeably. Perry, in the wings, was poking one of his long fingers into Mr. Banning's ribs, all unconscious of what he was doing.
"We have them now, sir," he was saying. "Oh, but that hooked them beautifully. Now it's up to old sober-face George to go out and finish it."
The teacher of civics looked at Praska. "Nervous?" he asked. The boy shook his head. "Why should I be? I'm only going to tell them facts." He said it soberly, with no attempt at boasting. After all, that was how it seemed to him—merely telling Northfield's needs to the parents of those who came to Northfield High. It was like saying what he had to say to Northfield's family.
And yet when he walked out on the stage, his breath caught momentarily in his throat. He had not dreamed that so many people were there. Row upon row, aisle upon aisle, they filled the floor and the balcony. Voters, American citizens—and yet they had come out to-night to harken to the appeal of youth. Some were there who had been in high school when he came to Northfield with his freshman class. It made him feel anew how short was the distance from the classroom to the voting booth.
"Men and women of Northfield," he said, "the students of Northfield appeal to you for your help. This is your school as much as ours; that is why you are here to-night. We ask for this athletic field for the same reason that you wouldn't go into a shoe-store and buy one shoe. One shoe wouldn't be enough; there'd be something lacking. And a school without a field that the students can feel is theirs is lacking, too. Such a school trains the mind, but it does not train the body that contains the mind.
"The World War brought a lesson to America. Thousands of men were rejected for army service because they were physically unfit. It is a duty of citizenship for one to be ready to serve his country. A country that gives as much as the United States gives, has the right to ask something in return. It asks, in times of peace, a citizenship that is 100 per cent. active. There can be no 100 per cent. activity in a person whose body is not 100 per cent. fit. That is what we at Northfield ask—a place where we can build up and create the stamina and strength necessary for all the emergencies of American life.
"We want you to see, before you go, some of the spirit of Northfield. And so I ask the students to sing our school hymn, 'Northfield Forever.'"
The orchestra struck up the opening bars, and the strains of the song swept through the auditorium in a mighty chorus. It was good to hear—stirring, heart-warming. Praska, when it was done, stepped forward again.
"Without the fathers and mothers of Northfield behind us," he cried, "Northfield could not be what it is. I want a big cheer for mother and for dad."
A cheer leader came running down the aisle. "Are you ready? Everybody in on this. Make it good. Yip yip!"
The cheer crashed out probably as no Northfield cheer had ever crashed before. A storm of applause burst from the audience. Seized with the inspiration of the moment, Praska raised his hands.
"Won't you?" he asked the people, "sing 'Northfield Forever' with us? We want it to be your song as well as ours."
Many there scarcely knew the words—but they had caught the spirit. The deep voices of the men, the clear, rising notes of the women, sent a thrill of emotion through Praska's veins. Then it was over, and the audience was out of the seats and flowing down the aisles toward the doors. Northfield had told its story. The campaign was over. It rested for the morrow to write a verdict of victory—or defeat.
Election day brought to Praska a restless spirit and a profound depression. Now that there was nothing to do but to wait and hope, a dozen doubts and fears assailed his mind. After all, the arguments that had been so bravely given in the auditorium were but the opinions of boys and girls. Last night they had seemed logical and all-sufficient; to-day they seemed hollowly futile and lifeless. Boys and girls attempting to influence the opinions of mature men and women! From the bleak outlook of to-day the whole campaign took on the mask of brazen madness, a youthful, impetuous, but impotent masquerade.
And yet even in his darkest moments, the thrill that had come to him on the stage ran through him anew. Then and there, some sixth sense told him, Northfield had won the sympathy of its hearers. But would it last? Had it not been merely the triumph of the moment? To-day, away from the cheers, and the songs, and the enthusiasm, would not men and women lose the glamour and view the whole scene lightly? He did not know—but he feared. Boys and girls trying to sway the judgment of their elders! It wore the torturing garments of a gross impossibility.
He walked with his father and mother to the polling place, and waited outside while they voted. In spite of his discouragement his pulse quickened at the sight of the party workers patrolling the sidewalk, the watchers inside, the election clerks, and the ballot box on the plain pine table.
"Well," said his father as they walked home, "there are two votes for the athletic field."
Two, and Northfield with 10,000 voters registered. Two votes seemed so meagre.
The afternoon ran to its close. Daylight faded. The clock struck six, and then seven. A tremor shook his body. The polls had closed. The result was written. He was in a fever to go to the City Hall in the hope of learning the verdict, but shrank from arriving too early and having to wait in an agony of apprehension. At nine o'clock running feet pattering through the street; a knock sounded on the door. Perry King and Bristow clamored for admittance.
"The first ballot box has just been turned in to the City Clerk," Perry panted. "Fourth election district of the second ward. The vote was sixty-eight for the field and fifty against. What do you think of that?"
"We've started something," Bristow cried excitedly.
Hope—wild hope—came to Praska. Only about half of the voters were bothering to mark their ballots on the referendum; but of those who had voted, a majority had thrown their support to the school. If the same ratio held throughout the town—
"I'll go back with you," he said.
When they reached the City Hall, the City Clerk's office was crowded, and it was impossible for them to worm their way past the doorway. They stood in the rotunda, among excited men who spoke only of the vote on Commissioner Sloan. He was, on the early returns, running behind. Out in the street horns began to blow, and a procession wormed its way into the building. The marchers were the supporters of the man who was running against the Commissioner. From time to time election boards, having finished their count, came in with their tally-sheets and their ballot boxes and surrendered both to the City Clerk.
By half-past ten Commissioner Sloan's defeat was a certainty. The horn blowing had become a raucous din. Above the heads of the press of people Praska saw the tall form of Carlos Dix.
"Mr. Dix!" he shouted. "Mr. Dix!"
The lawyer looked about him, doubtfully.
"Mr. Dix!" Praska waved a frantic hand.
The lawyer saw them then, and forced his way through the crowd. One look at his face, and Praska read the story of victory.
"The field will win by six or seven hundred votes," Carlos Dix said. "Your meeting last night just about put it through. Praska, I'm proud of you. I look upon this as a big thing."
"It's certainly a big thing for Northfield," said Perry.
"It's a big thing in many ways," Carlos Dix said gravely.
Bristow flashed Praska a wise, knowing look. And at that moment Praska's taste of triumph slowly turned to a taste of ashes.