Page 41 - The Adventures of a Freshman

CHAPTER VIII

HOW IT FEELS TO BE A HERO

Several weeks had passed since Deacon Young had become a class hero, and a great many things had
happened.

The Freshmen had published and posted their own proclamations since then (with a good crack on a man
named Ballard), and the Sophomores had torn them down, long ago. The Ninety-blank class football team had
been started, and Young was trying for the position of right guard--and finding football not so much a matter
of mere muscle as it looked; the class glee club had been organized; a great many friendships had begun;
nearly everybody had joined Whig or Clio Hall (whether they cared to debate or not); and they were all
becoming thoroughly accustomed to being at college and had begun to love it. But Freshman Young was not
yet accustomed to having people treat him with so much consideration, and he did not know quite what to
make of it.

It was still amazing to him that such a comparatively small matter could make such a difference in the way he
was regarded. One day he was the most obscure and despised man in the Freshman class, and the next day--he
was the most talked of character on the campus. He did not wake up to find himself famous; he had become
famous all in a minute, before he had a chance to go to sleep. Ever since, it had been, "How are you, old
man," from the very ones who used to laugh and say, "Here comes 'Thank you marm.'" Prominent fellows in
the class who formerly merely nodded to him, said, "You must drop up to my room some evening." The
Sophomores bothered him no more; Channing and Ballard--somehow they were always looking in the other
direction when Young met them on the walk. Even upper-classmen said, "Hello there, Young,"
condescendingly but pleasantly, and that fellow Linton stopped him one day and congratulated him. "Only,"
he added, puffing his pipe, "only don't get stuck on yourself, Young."

"Hello-o-o, Deacon, hold up a minute," called Minerva Powelton one day on the way from Recitation Hall.
"Say, Deacon, old man, come over to my room, I want to talk to you." He threw an arm carelessly over one of
the Deacon's good shoulders.

"It's about something important," he said in an undertone as they passed between the Bulletin Elm and Old
Chapel, where the crowd was always thickest. More than one Freshman, looking on, wished he could be on
such familiar footing with Young. There were others who wished they could be thus sought out by Powelton.

It was right here, Young remembered, Powelton put this same arm in the same way about Lee that day he first
heard about the proclamations. Powelton ignored Young that day. But that was before the Ballard episode.

"Deacon," said Powelton, when they had reached the latter's room--everyone called him "Deacon" now, and
he liked it--"a crowd of us fellows are getting up a new eating-club, so we can all be together; at present, you
know, the gang is scattered all over town. We thought we'd go some place where we could have an extra room
to loaf and read the papers in, like the upper-classmen clubs, besides getting better grub, even if we have to
pay a little more for it. There'll be Lucky, of course, and Stevie and Todd--Polk would come, only he has been
taken to the 'Varsity training table" (that was the football man who was next to Young in the rush), "and
White, and, well the whole gang of us, you know, and we want you to join us. It's the best crowd in the class,
all right enough, even if I do say it myself."

"Much obliged for asking me," Young interrupted, "but I can't afford it."

A few weeks ago Young would have given some other excuse, or would have blushed and hemmed and
hawed before he got out this one. And a few weeks before, the other Freshman might not have known how to
reply to it: but they had both gained some new ideas since they came to college, and also had lost some old