hull's part. It was getting dark and the half was ebbing fast three minutes more to play. A fourth time the Woodhull furiously attacked the breach, gaining at every rush over the light opposition, past the fortyyard line, past the twenty-yard mark, and triumphantly, in the last minute of play, over the goal for a touchdown. The ball had been downed well to the right of the goal-posts and the trial for goal was an unusually difficult one. The score was a tie; everything depended on the goal that, through the dusk, Tough McCarty was carefully sighting. Dink, heartbroken, despairing, leaning on his linesman's staff, directly behind the ball, waited for the long, endless moments to be over. Then there was a sudden movement of McCarty's body, a wild rush from the Kennedy, and the ball shot high in the air and, to Stover's horror, passed barely inside the farther goal-post. "No goal," said Slugger Jones. "Time's up." Dink raised his head in surprise, scarcely crediting what he had heard. The Woodhull team were furiously disputing the decision, encouraged by audible comments from the spectators. Slugger Jones, surrounded by a contesting, rioting mass, suddenly swept them aside and began to take the vote of the officials. "Kiefer, what do you say?" Cap Kiefer, referee, shook his head. "I'm sorry, Slugger; it was close, very close, but it did seem a goal to me.' "Tug, what do you say?" "Goal, sure," said Tug Wilson, linesman for the Woodhull. At this, jeers and hoots broke out from the Kennedy. "Of course he'll say that!" "He's from the Woodhull." "Hold up, hold up, now!" said Slugger Jones, more excited than any one else. "Don't get excited; it's up to your own man. Dink, was it a goal or no goal?" Stover suddenly found himself in a whirling, angry mass the decision of the game in his own hands. He saw the faces of Tough McCarty and the Coffee-Colored Angel in the blank crowd about him and he saw the sneer on their faces as they waited for his answer. Then he saw the faces of his own team-mates and knew what they, in their frenzy, expected from him. He hesitated. "Goal or no goal!" cried the umpire, for the second time. Then suddenly, face to face with the hostile mass, the fighting blood came to Dink. Something cold went up his back. He looked once more above the riot to the shadowy posts, trying to forget Tough McCarty, and then, with a snap to his jaws, he answered: 66 CLASS ACTIVITIES 1. Why was Stover kept out of the "house" game? 2. What characteristics of the various boys are suggested by their nicknames? 3. Match the nicknames in this story with names which boys in your school give each other. 4. Where is the "problem" of the story presented? What is the "high spot" or "climax"? 5. Would you like to know how Stover played in the big game? Perhaps some one has a copy of the book, The Varmint. 6. Would the boys of Kennedy be angry at Stover? What do you suppose happened after he said "goal"? 7. Why is this story placed in this section of "Going to School"? 8. Explain from your own experience: a. Why a game must have an umpire. b. How it feels to lose a game. c. How it feels to fight hard in a losing game. d. What games are good for. e. What "victory in defeat" means. CLASS-LIBRARY READINGS SPORTS AND SPORTSMANSHIP IN SCHOOL LIFE 1. "The Story of Athletics," World Book, 1:457. "Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!" The scene was a plain, bare schoolroom, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his statements by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes looked as if they were in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely enough room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's stubborn carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unyield'ng grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it wasall helped the emphasis. “In this life, we want nothing but Facts, Sir; nothing but Facts!" The speaker and the schoolmaster and the third grown person present all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the little children then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim. Thomas Gradgrind, Sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeded upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who was not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, Sir-peremptorily Thomas Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, Sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell exactly what it came to. It was a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. One might hope to get some other foolish belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all imaginary, nonexistent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, Sir! In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words "boys and girls" for "Sir," Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the pupils, the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts. Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. "Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, "I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?" "Sissy Jupe, Sir," explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying. "Sissy is not a name," said Mr. Gradgrind. "Don't call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecelia." "It's father as calls me Sissy, Sir," returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey. "Then he has no business to do it," said Mr. Gradgrind. "Tell him he mustn't. Cecelia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?" "He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, Sir." Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand. "We don't want to know anything about that, here. You mustn't tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, doesn't he?" "If you please, Sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, Sir." "You mustn't tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?" "Oh yes, Sir." "Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse." (Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.) Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!" said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general benefit of all the little pitchers. "Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals. Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours." The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely whitewashed room, shone on Sissy. For the boys and girls sat in two compact bodies, divided up the middle by a narrow interval; and Sissy, at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, |