University of San Francisco - USF Don Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

Page 16 text:

12 TIIE ION ATI AN or tousled hair—that was impossible—must be avoided at all costs—simply wasn’t done. Then a strange thing happened, an incident at which Fate herself must have smiled when she planned it. J. Bentley Partmour dropped his cane. Now Partmour knew that no one could go up the Avenue in the afternoon without a cane, no matter how urgent the reason, so he leaned over to pick it up. And then the very gods laughed. The stevedores were already around him, but J. Bentley, intent upon more important things, heeded them not. One jostled him—his eye glass dropped to the ground. Deftly his cane was kicked from under his nose. It was soon converted into tooth-pieks. A massive foot came down on his eye glass. A tiny heap of crushed glass showed where it had fallen. J. Bentley began to see red. Slowly he raised himself to his full height and then out of his throat rose a low, ungodly growl—a growl that might have come from the Grecian line as it stood at Salamis, or from Wellington’s Grays as they crossed Waterloo, or from the trampled fields of any football stadium when twenty-two young heroes convert themselves into human catapults. It was a growl of defiance, of battle—and it issued unrestrained from the lips of the very proper J. Bentley Partmour. An instant later he suited the action to the growl, if we may modify a time-worn saying to further the great cause of Literature and Truth. To describe J. Bentley’s strategy in this momentous battle would require a genius for narration far above my powers. Suffice it to say that he covered a great deal of ground—in more ways than one—and, to paraphrase the ancient chroniclers, he smote and was smitten with right hearty goodwill. I must add here, (it is my duty as a faithful historian to do so), that J. Bentley used his feet and his teeth also to excellent advantage. How long the battle raged. Partmour never knew. His first returning consciousness to the realities of polite life was when he was dragged from the scene of conflict by two police-

Page 15 text:

FIGHT ’EM HARVARD 11 was guarding the dock, “What is the matter here, anyhow? Why that bunch of men over there?” “Oh! them fellows? They’re stevedores — on strike — laying for any scabs that try to load up the boat,” calmly replied the special. “That’s nice,” grinned Parker, “I sail on that boat to-day, for Yucatan.” “Not to-day, I’m afraid. It’ll take ’em a day more to load her even after the cops come down an’ clear these here strikers off. You better wait till the boys from the station come before you try an’ cross this dock.” “Yes, that’s an excellent thought—one is liable to receive a stone in the head from one of those bruisers,” exclaimed Part mou r. “Oh, come on across ’ replied Parker, “what’s the difference ? ’ ’ Partmour never had an opportunity to explain to Parker just what the difference was, for scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when the mob, as if by common impulse, swept down upon them. Self-preservation was the first thought of the guard, and with one whoop he raced for his life. Parker, on the other hand, with the old football spirit surging in his veins, a broad grin on his face, quietly awaited the rush. Partmour was petrified—never in his eminently proper life had-he been face to face with a situation such as this. All the poise that he had acquired through numerous sieges at the tea-table, and the evolutions of dancing, and campaigns of flirtation, suddenly abandoned him. It was not physical fear that possessed him. It was the bad form of a street-row. J. Bentley Partmour mixed up with stevedores in a dock fight! How would that look in newspaper headlines? And even if it were kept out of the papers—for that could be accomplished—the very idea of a collar awry, a battered face,

Page 17 text:

FIGHT 9EM HARVARD 13 men and unceremoniously dropped upon some bales of hay. When lie was able to grasp things and persons more clearly, lie realized that Parker—a rather bloody Parker—with a smile that was lacking two teeth, was wiping his face with a soiled handkerchief. Also, Partmour observed, Parker seemed highly elated over something, and was repeating in a sort of chant, 4‘The higher breed, the higher breed—Fight 'em, Harvard, Fight ’em! .... The higher breed!— I knew lie had it in him!” Then it dawned upon J. Bentley that the paean was dedicated exclusively to his, J. Bentley’s prowess in the conflict, whereupon lie drew himself solemnly, though unsteadily to his feet, and through very puffed lips, said with unruffled dignity: “I say, Parker, you’re entirely wrong—entirely. Merely entered the brawl to chastise the brutes that—that forgot their place. Really, you must understand, it was merely in the form of a reprisal—a reprisal, and all that sort of thing and you must understand it as such, really.” And then, as Parker laughed in loud, uproarious mirth, vague memories of the late conflict arose in J. Bentley's brain. He remembered now that he had heard the cry as from a distance in the thickest of the fight “Fight ’em. Fight ’em, Harvard!” He remembered—but no, it could not be—that he too had repeated and repeated and revelled in the words. ITe stopped, puzzled—he looked for an answer into the laughing, though blackened, eyes of Parker. “Did I really, Parker?” he said. The answer was emphatic. “J. Bentley, you did!”