YOU HAVEN'T CHANGED A BIT
And, the Wbrm Came Back and Turned
By WALLACE IRWIN'
Illustrations by Herbert Bohnert
9
r ir-JAMBRIDGE ANDERSON, Eliliu University, class of '99, at-
uiiui-u siiun ii uvgiuc ui jiujmiui iij , utL'u in ins il cannula yeur,
that he was at once nicknamed Ham-Anil. He business-managed
class teams with tho skill of an Ulysses; ho whanged his way
into the mandolin club, introduced the latest thing in corduroy
trousers and joined tho Yappa Alphabet Fraternity, a league of
amateur drunkards of whom he soon became chief welkin-ringer.
At the rude, unlettered poetry, so relished in our institutions of
higher learning, he became adopt. And even today, in Old Eliliu, to hiui is
attributed the authorship of the following Auachreoutic:
Some love coffee,
Some love tea,
Some love the girls
And the girls love me:
The girls love me,
But is n't it queer?
The only thing that I love
The only thing that he loves)
Is BEER 1
In a word, Hambridge Anderson, '99, became prominent everywhere, except
in the intellectual soirees held every Wednesday night along Faculty Row. It
is tine a tendency to double chin and a certain sedentary habit prevented his
excelling at outdoor sports; but at the indoor sport of draw poker he held un
rivalled a three year continuous championship. Ham-And had the knack of
spending a dollar in such a way that it sounded like Ave, and it became rumored
about that his father was a stingy meat-magnate of Omaha. As a matter of
rude fact, Anderson pere was a hard-working bookkeeper in the Cudahy estab
lishment but why mar fair college days with sordid family truths? Young
Anderson floated on the high tide, the admired of damsels for Elilm is co
educational and when the time came to pay his fraternity dues or syllabus
fees, ho organized an all-night game of poker.
Elihu, being an extremely new University, is more easily imposed on, perhaps,
than some others. Perhaps we are all worshippers of false gods at the puppy age
of college, At any rate, this worldly wise, well-clad hero passed those perilous
years by the skin of his teeth, playing sharp cards, borrowing judgematically or
bluffing his examinations, and he still managed to hold a position of semi
idolatry among his fellow students.
About tho time the class prophet was predicting that Hambridge Anderson
would become a world-famous leader of men, the latter ignominiously "flunked
out" and left college by request.
OF COURSE there was a girl in it, and the romance implicated Tommy
Vonnoh Sentimental Tommy, as his brothers of the Yappa Alphabet
indulgently called him. lie was scrawny and slender with a spatulate nose, a
mild blue eye and a weakness for hero worship. He was a victim of misplaced
faith. He believed in fairies. It was only the comparative exclusiveness of a
fraternity house that saved Tommy from becoming the Property Butt and
General Easy Mark of the college. Even as it was, if there was anybody to be
"ragged" around tho Yappa house it was always Tommy, partly because he
would swallow any hoax without question, partly because lie took his hoaxing
with a saintly sweetness of temper.
Ham-Aud Anderson took Sentimental under his wing. As a freshman, Tommy
amused Ham-And when all else palled. He won the younger man by Apache
methods broke his collar-bone for him in the freshman-sophomore rush, in
duced him to hold a sack and candle all night in the midst of a drafty field sup
posedly frequented by snipe, borrowed his neckties and taught him the
mysteries of draw poker. For his poker instruction Tommy, it is said, paid a
high tuition, but he endured his fleecing like a lamb and followed his master
about bleating for more, after the manner of Mary's fabled pet. Thus was the
character of these two striplings moulded
at college. For college is a great moulder
of character, is it not ?
The girl's name was Doris Lynde, a
romantic co-ed from the romantic State of
Florida. Slim was her waist and Nature
had tinted her hair a deep amber to match
her Southern eyes. Poor Tommy saw her
first, but the enterprising Hambridge got
in ahead of him, as usual. The sentimental
lad wooed her with a rather battered guitar
which he took over to her sorority house
every evening she would let him, and played
Drink To Me Only with Thine Eyes while
she rolled those well-accustomed orbs and
murmured, "You all have a lovely tenah
voice !" But honest, blunt, generous Ham
bridge lavished money on her like a man
of tho world especially just after a
poker game with Tommy Vonnoh. On
such occasions Ham-And would take her
for long drives behind a smart bay and
aHaaalalaHHaaaaaaaaaaaEiC
For hit poker instruction Tommy, it U said, paid a lilgh tuition
in a dashing dog-cart. This triumph alone drove Tommy, the world's dupe, to
despair; and ho would lock himself in his little room under the eaves and weep
into a volume of Keats.
It was the evening of the Junior Prom when Ham-Aud received his walking
papers from the faculty of old Eliliu. Touching and well-posed was his fare
well of Doris Lynde. He chose a clump of palms for the scene with a bench
beneath. With one hand on his hip, tho other on tho back of the seat that held her
he leaned over rather gracefully for a futtish boy.
"Perhaps these college friendships don't mean anything to you "
"Perhaps not " She raised those amber wonders.
"Then maybe?"
"Maybe " She skilfully lowered those dangerous orbs.
Tommy Vonnoh came up for tho next dance and bade Ham-And an affectionate
farewell, because the latter was leaving on the midnight train.
"Good by, ol' man !" lie said in a choking voice. "They don't make many a3
square as you."
Hambridge stood for a moment and watched the Southern girl departing on tho
arm of Sentimental Tommy. Alrcudy she was practicing tho sorcery of her eyes
upon that ealflsh youth. Hambridge smiled. Born with a worldly thermometer
under his tongue, he knew she was a flirt, and ho knew she knew it; and the goat,
as usual, was Tommypoor Sentimental!
Ham-And Anderson packed his trunk and vauished across that dim horizon
line beyond the college walls. About all his personality seemed to go with his
trunk; for his name was forgotten in a semester, save for a few bad bills and some
initials roughly carved on several beer-stained tables. For all his old friends knew,
Anderson might have been buried in n
crevasse, latitude 80, never again to show
his face in the World We Know. Never,
did I Ray? Well, hardly ever.
This happened in tho Spring of '98.
TT WAS in the winter of 1012 that Ham-
bridge Anderson, wearing a green
Alpino hat with a ribbon in the back, tan
gaiters and a strap-cinched overcoat of
Scottish weave, sat down at a weathered
oak table in tho Rollo drill, just off tho
board walk in Atlantic City. It was the
dull season of tho year and tho Rollo
drooped with tho fly-specked paper wis
teria of last season. Anderson was tho
same Ham-And as of old, only about
thirty-five pounds more so. Physical and
moral degeneration had set in to tho extent
that his features gave tho effect of having
slid a half inch downward. His lids hung
over his piggy, gray eyes, his lower lip .
And weep Into a volume of KetU